


Revelations

by ClinicalChaos



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Alec Lightwood, Blood and Torture, Dark Alec Lightwood, Dom/sub Undertones, Downworlder Dad Magnus Bane, Downworlder Politics, Engaged Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Established Relationship, Good Parabatai Jace Wayland, Head of the Institute Alec Lightwood, Hurt Magnus Bane, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Nephilim, Parabatai Feels, Politics, Shadowhunter Culture, Torture, Violence, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2020-09-23 01:36:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20331892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClinicalChaos/pseuds/ClinicalChaos
Summary: Magnus Bane has been taken. Alec Lightwood is not merciful in his quest to take him back.





	1. If the Heavens ever did speak

**Author's Note:**

> 8:13 And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound! 
> 
> 15:1 And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blankly, Alec took the offered iPad from Underhill, sat down at his desk, and watched his worst nightmare play out on the screen. Magnus, bound. Magnus, screaming. Magnus, dressed in nothing but his blood.

“You know, these aren’t skills that I’ve ever had to use,” Alec said. His blade gleamed under the grim lighting.

His hands wielded the blade confidently, but his words weren’t a lie. As a rule, Alec didn’t like to lie. Alec had been taught by the fallout with the Soul Sword that events never ended well when he lied. Lying had made Alec more miserable than any other bad habit he possessed—and that was no small number.

Lying had almost married Alec to _Lydia_.

Alec would never insult Lydia; at least, not since he’d abandoned her at the alter mid-wedding ceremony. She was brave, smart, and driven, with a moral and ethical standard that Alec thought would shame even the Angels. Lydia was also Alec’s friend, the first that he had ever made outside of his siblings. They exchanged emails almost daily. But their marriage would have led to no kind of happy life for either of them. Alec knew that in his bones.

He knew that like he knew when Jace would deliver a roundhouse kick that Alec needed to duck for. The way he knew that Izzy would always be able to identify that weird goo before scientists twice her age. Like he had known that Max hadn’t had the Heat and Courage in Battle runes confused. Max had just been born with their mother’s temper and their father’s self-control (or lack thereof). And Max had hated rune study, because Markham Hightower had been in his rune study group. That kid had bullied Max for something like nine months before the fire incident. No one else had known that—Max still hadn’t learned how bad lying was—but he didn’t lie to Alec. That was the kind of relationship they shared.

Max had also insisted that he could handle it. Alec had agreed to trust him to handle it, so long as Max didn’t set anymore fires. No pyromania since. Markham Hightower, Max reported, had learned to shut his mouth since nearly going up in flames. There. Parenting.

Alec didn’t swallow. He couldn’t. He didn’t frown or flinch or grimace. In this room, anger, sadness, and exhaustion did not exist for him. He was still water, the kind that ran deep. A mirror. The kind that reflected, from the corner of the eye, all kinds of horrors. He thought about Lydia and Jace and Izzy and Max because they were his center.

In training, the instructors had taught him that his duty was his center. That when he used these skills, he should wrap himself in the glory of Raziel. Bubble wrap for the soul. You didn’t send something fragile through the bumpy mail service without bubble wrap. And Alec liked rules. He enjoyed order. He loved his duty. He honoured Raziel. But he valued none of those things so much as his friend Lydia, or Jace, Izzy, and Max. So. When he used these skills, his thoughts turned to them.

But now, as he set to work, Alec wanted to swallow. Because, recently, thinking of Max made him think of kids. And kids made him think of Magnus. In his heart, Alec _really_ wanted kids with Magnus. But Magnus was never supposed to be in a room like this. Alec had failed to keep him out once already. Now, Alec’s wandering mind would make him fail again.

Magnus was a being composed almost entirely of love. He fought like hell to hide it, tucking it behind glitter and sex and magic, but he was. Magnus never used the term ‘adopted,’ but Alec had met at least a dozen Downworlders who came to Magnus like he was their parent. Orphaned warlocks, or vampires with no one to guide them. There was a werewolf, now in Luke’s pack, who sent Magnus a non-denominational winter-themed card every December full of cramped handwriting and hearts. Even though she didn’t celebrate any holidays, the family-centric festivities in winter still made her think of Magnus.

There was also Clary. Magnus didn’t treat her at all like a client’s child. He indulged her like a favourite niece. And Madzie, who always ran first to Alec and clung to his legs when Catarina gently told her that it was time to leave, but conjured Magnus sparkly flower crowns because Magnus was her “favourite princess.” Magnus and children went together like sunshine and flowers, and the thought of one day being a part of that made hot molten joy leak out of Alec’s heart.

Alec loved Magnus. It had been a long, treacherous trudge uphill and often under fire to get there. He had worked through two decades of internalized homophobia and institutionalized racism—words he only even knew because of Magnus—and enough personal issues to buy a mundane therapist a beach house. He had stood against his parents, the Clave, and even Downworlders whose horror at the High Warlock of Brooklyn dating a Shadowhunter had only rivaled Idris’s horror that a Downworlder was dating a Lightwood. It had been rough. Even if they hadn’t been fighting a war at the same time, it would have been rough.

But they had survived it all. Valentine, his psychotic son, the Owl, Valentine’s psychotic son _again_, Asmodeus, and Lilith—like defeating the antagonists in Simon’s video games, he and Magnus had surpassed each level. They had survived fucking _Edom_. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, except, blessedly, Alec hadn’t screwed up getting Magnus back.

Alec’s ring sat on Magnus’s finger. The Lightwood ring, passed down through his paternal line since the first Lightwood had drunk from the Mortal Cup. They were _engaged_. Alec had gone to Edom with a wedding to plan, and now he and Magnus were back in New York. They were two months away from their painstakingly chosen wedding date. Painstakingly chosen, because Magnus had taken to wedding planning like he took to fashion shows—with a manic passion for details, color-coordination, and meaning.

Alec was happy to do as he was told and offer opinions when asked. He had dutifully tried what seemed like every cake between Manhattan and Brooklyn, only to agree (in a double-blind taste test, of course) with Magnus that the chocolate bourbon ganache from the bakery four blocks from the loft was to die for. They had toured venues extensively and internationally: Indonesia, India, England, and Barbados had all been strong contenders. But when the Clave had offered Alicante—had offered to _open Alicante’s borders to Downworlders_—as a formal symbol of the changing times, the choice was made. Other details had fallen seamlessly in line: colours (royal blue and gold), flowers (orchids), and the date (August, because that was the month they had met, the twenty-third, because that was a day no one had been fighting or dying on that month). 

Alec didn’t close his eyes. His hands were careful and unceasingly devoted to their task on the table. But, for a moment, he was caught in a memory.

_“You know_,” Magnus whispered, _“it was really unfair of you to propose first.” _

_“Oh?” _Alec said, rolling over in bed to face Magnus properly. _“How so?”_

_“You know I like to spoil you_." His lips alighted on Alec’s, teeth nibbling gently. Alec gave himself up easily to being kissed, letting the hot-soft-wet of Magnus’s mouth slide over him. Desire sparked in his belly.

_“I would have planned the engagement for the ages,”_ Magnus mused, filling the space they used to breathe with wild implications. Alec blushed, only too willing to imagine what Magnus had in mind.

They had spoken at length about the near-disastrous way the Lightwood ring had become Magnus’s. They could speak about engagements, now, without hurting. That was why Alec could rear up in Magnus’s arms and press closer, to bite sweetly at the place behind his ear that made Magnus hum. _“You have the wedding,”_ Alec murmured, a teasing coax. 

Magnus grinned, joy bright in his eyes but not outshining his mischievous mouth. _“But I want this, too,” _he said. The pop of a ring box snapping open punctuated his sentence. _“I want my ring on your finger, too.”_

Magnus was love incarnate, and so he was often both possessive and performative. Alec didn’t know why he hadn’t seen this coming. He was pleased, in any case. Alec liked to know his place, to be assured that he was where he belonged. He loved belonging to Magnus. He was always going to say yes. But Magnus wasn’t the only person with a sense of humor in their relationship. 

_“Ask me, then,”_ Alec ordered, blank-masked. He lounged back against the silk-covered, goose-down pillows. In a bed like this, under the attention of a man like Magnus, it was easy to play at being imperious. _“I’ll consider it.”_

Magnus hummed. _“My cheeky, snarky boy_,” he said. His long fingers snapped out, skimming slowly over and then sharply twisting Alec’s nipple. The glamor over his eyes flickered out as Alec gasped, arching up.

Smirking, Magnus pushed Alec onto his back. He batted away the pillows and pinned Alec flat against the sheets. One hand splayed over his throat, big and hot against his skin. Alec’s lashes fluttered. He was greedy to catch every slitted glance that Magnus would allow him, but Magnus was ethereal. Overwhelming. Backdropped by the dark ceiling, his body glowed golden. His hair was a shock of dark waves, freed of styling for bed. His features were sharp, but his mouth was soft, and his glimmering cat’s eyes were lined by nothing but thick black lashes. Alec was won. He fell into the next kiss, a consuming meeting of lips and tongue. Fingers tightened around his wrists, gathered in Magnus’s other hand, forcing them neatly into the sheets. The band of the Lightwood ring bit into Alec’s skin. As the kiss broke, he stifled a groan.

_“Stay,”_ Magnus ordered. His mouth was set just this side of vicious, his lips wet, red, and swollen.

Hard and hopeless, Alec did as he was told. 

_“You are mine,” _Magnus said. He words rang with the edge of a vow. He bent his head and kissed bruises onto Alec's collarbones, his chest, across his stomach and hips, and into his most intimate places. _“Forever, for none other.”_ Merciless. Devoted. The warm tingle of Magnus’s magic made him wet, prepared for one long finger to claim him, and then another, rapid fire. 

_“Please,”_ Alec breathed, struggling for words. The whining, panting, moaning noises Magnus had drawn from his lips had done nothing to help him so far. “_Please, Magnus, please.”_ His eyes screwed shut. He choked out his pleasure as Magnus brushed his most sensitive spot, three fingers buried deep inside him. He jerked, his leaking cock bouncing against his stomach, and pushed his hips down on Magnus’s fingers. He was desperate for any kind of increase of touch. He didn’t dare move his wrists, however, bound now by naught but Magnus’s word. Magnus had never needed anything but words, with Alec.

Magnus hushed him, fingers leaving—Alec groaned miserably—his hole. Magnus’s lips found his wrists, brushing hot kisses over the fragile skin there, and then over each of Alec’s scrunched eyelids. He ended his travels on Alec’s quivering mouth. Alec gasped shakily into the kiss, moaning when Magnus dragged against his tongue and took greedily what Alec offered. He was dying to continue, to taste more of Magnus, but Magnus pulled away. His wrists set to their station, Alec could do nothing but wrench against his invisible bonds. He was held by his own devotion to Magnus’s command. Need burned white hot in his gut, muscles aching as he fought not to come, to follow Magnus’s implicit orders, to be _good_.

_“Easy, my love,_” Magnus soothed. His unsticky fingers carded through Alec’s hair, pausing just to wipe away an embarrassing tear that had been making its way down Alec’s face. He breathed, relaxing incrementally back against the bed. Dizzying warmth was slipping into his muscles. He felt like he might melt, or else float away on the next stray breeze.

_“No more words, now_,_” _Magnus said, drawing back Alec’s attention. His mouth snapped shut, eager for the pleased hum that Magnus gave him. “_Eyes open.”_ He sobbed, struggling to obey. Magnus’s other fingers had slipped back into his hole, striking with stunning accuracy. Another tear slipped past him. This time, Magnus just cooed as it rolled into Alec’s sweat-darkened hair.

When Alec was watching him again, Magnus kissed his throat in reward. Alec could feel his grin against his spasming skin. He whined, but to no avail. Magnus’s fingers twisted and thrust, driving Alec to the brink. He abandoned Alec’s hair to lovingly stroke his belly, nails dragging down Alec’s treasure trail but just missing his straining cock. More tears leaked down his face. Magnus bent closer to interrupt their path with wet kisses. _“Such a good boy for me,” _Magnus murmured._ “Are you ready, love?”_ His cock so hard that Alec wasn’t sure that he had blood left anywhere else in his body, he nodded jerkily. He fought against the tears to keep his eyes on Magnus. 

Sweat beaded Magnus’s brow, his own desire tightly held but straining. He grinned, sharp and wild, and pulled his fingers out only long enough to replace them with his cock. Alec heaved, gut-punched by pleasure, falling back against the bed only after a full five seconds where his heart stuttered in his chest. A moan fell out of his mouth, lengthened by the shudder that rolled over his skin when Magnus’s hips twisted. Magnus’s breathless laugh sank into his skin like sunlight.

Alec dragged his eyes open again. He was barely aware that he’d closed them, lost in sensation. He fixed his gaze on Magnus’s chest as he tugged his wrists pointedly.

Magnus laughed, joyful. _“Yes, okay, darling. Gods, you’re so good for me. Touch me.”_

Alec never needed to be told twice. Core contracting, he reached up and buried his hands in Magnus’s hair. It was so soft against his palms when freed from products that he could never resist. He claimed that mouth next—hands sliding down to grip Magnus’s shoulders, to map his chest—and plundered freely, savoring the lingering berry taste of Magnus’s toothpaste (“Mint is unimaginative, Alexander”). He smothered their moans in that kiss, only giving up when Magnus cradled the back of his head and dropped them both back down. Magnus propped himself on one elbow so his other hand could wrap around Alec’s cock. Slicked with precum, he gripped and twisted. Alec bit off a swear and Magnus, damn him, did it again. Alec glared, struggling for control.

Magnus grinned. _“Words,” _he demanded, breath ghosting sweet and hot over Alec’s ear._ “Now, love. Tell me what you want with words.”_

_“I want you to fuck me harder, and keep touching me, and don’t stop. Magnus, please, you sadist, please—” _Speaking his desires in bed had once been a problem for Alec. Magnus had broken him of it. Now, Alec didn’t have thoughts. The words just streamed out, a river with a demolished dam.

_“Whatever you want, whatever you wish,”_ Magnus breathed, labored and blown-eyed. His hips crashed into Alec, held from savagery by a scant inch of mindfulness. Pleasure built up and crested, but never toppled over. Alec was drowning in it. Liberated, he clung to Magnus and tried to breathe. When he thought he couldn’t stand another moment of brutal pleasure, Alec took Magnus’s words as gospel and clenched hard around the solid heat battering his core.

“_Christ,”_ Magnus snared, hips stuttering, his control shook.

Alex grinned. _“Now who’s blaspheming in bed?—Fuck!”_

_“Serves you right, wicked creature,”_ Magnus smirked. He thrust up, swivelled, and Alec cried out again.

_“Magnus, Magnus, please, I’m sorry, please,”_ Alec mumbled, increasingly desperate and repentant_. _Magnus kissed him, long and adoring, even as Alec sunk his nails into his shoulders and raked down.

Magnus gasped into his mouth. He pulled away and sighed against Alec’s lips, _That’s it, darling. My lovely little warrior. You’ve been so good, I know. Come for me, now, dear, come on.”_

And Alec, as always, did as he was told. Sobbing, shaking, shattering apart, he came in a burst that robbed him of air and sight. He was swallowed by the light of it and left insensate. Only vaguely was he aware of the wet warmth filling him up. He was more aware of Magnus collapsing on top of him, loose-limbed and beautiful. He crossed his arms over Magnus’s back, breathing in his sandalwood scent from the crook of his neck while pleasure consumed him.

_“Yes, by the way,”_ Alec said, some indeterminable minutes later. The world spun slowly around him.

Magnus pushed up, locking eyes, immediately aware. He blushed. _“I didn’t even really ask properly. You’re distracting.”_

_“You never had to ask,”_ Alec replied softly, awed by this new bashfulness that he had never seen before. _“I’ve always been yours. I would be honoured to wear your ring. I love you.”_

Magnus’s eyes glimmered wetly. _“I love you, too, Alexander.”_

He'd fallen asleep encircled by Magnus, a new cool weight warming quickly around his finger. Now, Alec had devested himself of that ring. He hadn’t wanted to bring it into this room where the ugly things waited. A tiger’s eye stone on a band of gold. Too beautiful, like Magnus, for this side of Alec. For Alec at all, really. It sat, safe, on his dresser in the Institute.

His clothes were there, too. His ratty, comfortable sweater, dark jeans, and familiar boots. The clothes he wore now were from the black leather duffle that lived unassumingly in his weapon’s locker in the armory. Tailored trousers, dress shoes with echoing steps, and a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbow. A dark suit vest. The jacket was thrown over the chair, where he’d exchanged it for the waiting clear plastic apron and latex gloves. The duffle sat on the unoccupied table. Alec had neatly divulged its contents an item at a time, aware of the stammered breaths the other man in the room had taken but showing no outward attention.

Now, much of the glimmering hardware was bloody. They hadn’t been in a long time, not since Alec had graduated the program. His mother had been a hardliner against Downworlders and otherwise rebellious elements. Any who had crossed her Institute had been eliminated with all the lethal prejudice of her Circle-member roots. Maryse Lightwood took no prisoners. Alec’s special skills—learned in special classes at the Academy, invitation-only, never turned down if you liked breathing—had become dusty.

Sometimes, Alec thought that her refusal to use him was the kindest thing his mother had ever done for him. Or maybe Maryse just didn't like to play with her food. She hadn't been trained like Alec, or Aldertree, or the others had been. Maryse was a killer. Torture was a taste she hadn't acquired.

Aldertree had been happy to mutilate anyone necessary, comparatively. An ideal operative, but always so clumsy. He had taken Alec’s Institute, manipulated and abused his sister, and tormented the Downworld Alec had been so carefully fostering relations with. In the Academy, they were taught not to interfere with each other. Was terrorizing Alec’s _Parabatai_ and chasing him from Alec’s Institute non-interference? Alec thought not. He had no regrets about using Raphael Santiago to have Aldertree sent back to Idris. Alec's people were loyal, and they knew when to keep the security cameras running. When that footage trickled to the Clave, Aldertree had sunk. The Clave only supported their torturers when they _didn’t_ make evidence that could destroy the Accords. The resultant scandal had helped Alec keep Izzy’s yin fen addiction out of the Clave’s notice. Hiding that mess was the most decent thing Aldertree could have done, Alec figured—even if he hadn’t had a choice.

Alec hummed and set the knife down. “Are you ready to tell me the address, now?” His tone was purposefully conversational. Light. None of his seething rage or bone-deep terror leaked through, despite the hours the emotions had been given to build.

Magnus had been late for a noon coffee date with Catarina. When she’d called, he hadn’t picked up. That happened about as often as Hailey’s Comet. So, Catarina had checked the loft. Nothing. Then, she’d called Alec. A few words into assuring her that Magnus was probably fine—_“You and Magnus tell me all the time how he could squash my best Shadowhunters like bugs”_—Underhill had stormed into Alec’s office.

Underhill was Alec’s favourite man on his payroll because he didn’t screw around. _“Sit down. You need to see this. It’s Magnus.” _

Dread bloomed in his gut. Blankly, Alec had taken the offered iPad from Underhill, sat down at his desk, and watched his worst nightmare play out on the screen. Magnus, bound. Magnus, screaming. Magnus, dressed in nothing but his blood.

_“Alec,”_ Catarina snapped, still on the line with him through his Bluetooth. _“What’s going on? Talk to me!”_

_“Find a ‘sitter for Madzie and come to the Institute. I’ll have an escort meet you at the door."_ Not sparing another second, Alec ended the call.

Standing, he turned to Underhill. His Head of Security stood at perfect attention, empty-faced. _“Report,”_ Alec demanded.

The details were scant. Hours and hours later, they still were. At 13:09, the cyber security division had flagged an attempt to breach the firewall on Alec’s work computer. At 13:11, Underhill had opened the isolated malware on a secure server. At 13:14, Underhill had gone to Alec. By 14:00, Alec had briefed his siblings and Catarina, tried and failed to track Magnus with Jace while Catarina had tried and failed to track Magnus with magic, and sent his siblings to scour for leads. He had asked Catarina to handle the warlocks and had Underhill log into the CCTV to hunt for Magnus the Mundane way. Then, he had set the Institute on red alert. All available units had gathered in Ops, where Alec had passed down their new orders: find and recover Magnus Bane.

After this nightmare ended, Alec would have to reward his soldiers appropriately. Not one had hesitated. When Catarina had returned two hours and thirty-seven minutes later, reporting that the warlocks were a dead-end but would be on their best behavior until their High Warlock returned, she had stepped into a fully mobilized Institute.

_“I know Magnus is important to you, but I never thought I’d see the day that an Institute worked like this to find a warlock. Even a High Warlock,”_ Catarina said, staring at Alec’s people as they flung themselves into their mission.

_“Magnus is the fiancé of their Institute Head,”_ Alec replied. _“Some may not like it, some may not agree with it, but he is my choice. They won’t fail to bring him home.”_

_Not if they know what’s good for them_, went unsaid. Some may not like that Alec loved a Downworlder, but none of them wanted to work under a widower. Nephilim loved once, and fiercely, and they grieved much worse than they loved.

The man under Alec’s hands, Edward Ross, screamed through his gag. While Alec’s mind had been consumed with rehashing the last twenty-two hours, his hands had been so carefully trimming the skin off Ross’s chest. It was just a medium-sized patch on his right pectoral—Alec hadn’t even touched the nipple—but Ross screamed like Alec was carving his heart out. Absently, Alec tsked. Screamers were always such a headache. In Alec’s point of view, making noise while you were on the table had no point if you weren’t talking. It certainly didn’t endear you to your handler.

Annoyed, Alec ripped the severed piece off with a flick of his wrist. His strength rune made every maneuver so easy. The skin landed with a wet smack on the cement. Ross’s garbled screaming covered the sound almost entirely.

“You know, you were so brave when we brought you in,” Alec said. He kept his tone idle. A subject could never think that there was a rush. “I know my soldiers weren’t very gentle with you, but you kept a stiff upper lip. You were stoic, laconic. _Arrogant_, even. Remember?”

Ross whimpered. Alec dragged one gloved finger firmly over his newly peeled chest, watching as the vampire writhed against his bonds. He didn’t need to breath, and he was terrified enough now that the mental conditioning from his human life didn’t matter. He screamed until it hurt too much to continue. Alec waited for silence.

“You didn’t think I could hurt you, did you?” Alec mused. “I’m the gay, Downworlder-loving Shadowhunter. Surely, I wouldn’t have a blacksite in my Institute. I wouldn’t know how to use one.”

While he talked, Alec rested the blade again on Ross’s skinned pec. He should probably change out for a smaller knife—the lines might be a bit wonky if he didn't—but he liked the weight of this one in his hand. Using just the tip, he began to trace a familiar image on the raw, bleeding flesh. If he needed to, he would go back later and really gouge the lines in. His paring knife would work well. It was small, sharp, and keen. He could cut the lines so deep that even vampire healing would leave Ross with perfectly discernible scars. If Alec decided that he should live, that is.

The vampire was sobbing, fat, bloody tears rolling down his cheeks. He couldn’t really _pull_ against his bonds anymore, but he could squirm. Before even speaking, Alec had broken his knees and elbows with sharp strikes from the pommel of his Seraph blade. He had wanted to set the tone. There would be no negotiating. There would be no trial. Alec wasn’t there as an envoy of the Clave, and Ross wasn’t a suspect. Ross was a subject, and Alec was a student of Azrael. Between them, there was only pain.

After he finished his design—the Lightwood crest was actually quite simple—Alec gently wiped the bloody tears off Ross’s face. With careful fingers, he removed his gag. The vampire heaved, his human mindset returning a little with the pause in pain, and then immediately stilled as the movement wrenched his broken ribs and cut-up chest.

Alec smiled at him. “Are you ready to talk?”

Ross sighed gustily. He wouldn’t meet Alec’s eyes. “He’ll die before you find him,” he said. “You should be out looking for him, not— not—”

“Torturing you?” Alec filled in. While Ross tried to wriggle under his skin with more useless words, Alec busied himself attaching a blood bag to the IV stand set up at the head of the table. He adjusted the needle and poked it neatly into Ross’s arm. When he turned his attention back to Ross, confusion had filled the vampire’s eyes.

“What are you—? Rahh!” Ross’s sentence broke off in a scream. His whole body jerked up on the table, every muscle contracted. It was like he’d been struck by lightning. Alec let him burn for a while, then stopped the flow.

Gently, Alec rolled Ross’s head so that they were facing each other. He crouched, leaving them nose to nose. It took a few minutes, but Ross finally opened his eyes. They were red with broken blood vessels. 

“I don’t need to look for him,” Alec said, firm but soft. It was the tone he used when soothing flighty new recruits. “I have an Institute. Right now, every soldier under my command is turning this city upside down. They will find Magnus, just like they found you. But, you’re right,” Alec acknowledged. “My fiancé could be dead when they do. In that case, I won’t kill you.”

“What?” Ross said, his voice rough from screaming. He was so confused. Alec almost felt pity. But still water, _mirrors_, they don’t feel anything.

“What you felt in your veins just now? That was human blood laced with holy water.” Fresh horror dawned in the vampire’s eyes. Alec smiled again. “I think you’ve guessed where I’m going. It’ll keep you alive indefinitely, but it hurts like Hell. Doesn't it?”

“Please,” Ross said—well, whined. “Please, please. Just kill me. Please. I can’t do that again, I can’t—I’ll, I’ll go insane.”

“That’s appropriate,” Alec cut in. “Because if Magnus dies, if all my people find is his corpse, I’ll go insane, too. And all that will sooth me is the screams of the monster that kept me from rescuing him.” Absently, Alec wiped his hand through the blood still pouring down Ross’s chest. “Just think, I might live another sixty or seventy years. I could spend all of those years with my fiancé, or I could spend them with you.” Alec held up his hand and let Ross watch his blood leak down the glove, the play of the colour under the industrial lighting. “What do you think?” Alec asked. 

In a mad babble, Ross spit out everything he knew about Magnus Bane.

* * *

* * *

“Do you care, particularly, what happens to Ross?” Alec asked Raphael Santiago as he washed his hands. There wasn’t a speck of blood on Alec, but he still wanted to scrub off his skin in the shower. Not that Alec would ever waste the minutes. Jace was already preparing a team. By the time everyone was geared up, Alec would be ready to lead it.

He had abandoned the vampire the minute Ross ran out of things to say. Before Alec had stripped even his apron off, Underhill had radioed to say that Ops had verified the address. He would clean up the mess he’d made later. Yet, he didn’t want to step on Raphael’s toes. So, he was asking permission before he needed to seek forgiveness. _Look, Clave_, Alec thought wryly, _diplomacy! _

Raphael stared at him, blank-faced. Alec dried his hands and gave him a moment. He and Luke had both watched Alec work through the two-way glass at the front of the room. They had been informed of every step of his plan, from capture to torture. Raphael had even been the one to—awkwardly—bring up the idea.

_“The last bastard with your job did a number on me,” _Raphael said, staring at Ross as Alec’s soldiers dragged him into a holding cell. “_Do you have someone who can make this one talk?_”

_“I’ll handle it,”_ Alec replied. He could already feel the mentality coming over him, trickling in through his cracked heart. His veins felt icy.

_“Alec,”_ Luke started, fatherly and delicate like no one ever was with Alec. _“A few punches won’t do it. I don’t think you have anyone on staff with the training.”_

_“Not on staff, no,”_ Alec agreed. Not when Alec was already in residence.

Luke was quick. His jaw fell open for a second, but then he straightened up. _“I can't believe Maryse consented to that.”_

Alec shrugged. _“There was never a lot of consent involved.”_ He left to retrieve his bag, and when he entered the room with the strapped-down vampire, he knew the two Downworlder leaders were watching him.

“What would you do with him?” Raphael asked, now. Alec finished tying his boots and straightened. He thought for a moment.

“The Accords stipulate that Shadowhunters have the right to seek immediate and lethal retribution for innocent blood spilled by rouge elements,” Alec said. He looked Raphael over. He was confident that Raphael would give him what he wanted. “So, Raphael, what do you consider the vampire who drugged, kidnapped, and sold Magnus Bane to the highest bidder?”

Magnus could only wax proudly on about someone’s fashion sense for so long before Alec’s lightbulb went off. He hadn’t meant to let it slip to Alec, but Alec knew that the indomitable New York clan leader Raphael Santiago was one of Magnus’s foundlings.

So, as Alec had expected, Raphael replied, “He is no clansman of New York, nor any other I know of.”

Alec smiled. “In that case, the sun rises in an hour. Hopefully, Magnus will be back by then. Even better, he will be well enough to remind me why I should be merciful.”

“You would think that the children of Angels would be, anyway,” Raphael said, watching Alec with dark, considering eyes.

Alec stilled. So fresh from the room, he felt half-frozen. “If you think that, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

No, Alec didn’t lie anymore. But, sometimes, he wished that he did.


	2. Every Sunday's getting more bleak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wanted blood on his hands. He wanted his quiver light on his back as he stooped to pluck his lethal arrows from the eyes of his enemies. He wanted warm bodies screaming up their lives under his knives. He wanted his soldiers’ gear soaked a deeper black. And he wanted Magnus, safe, back at the loft, their home—and the rest of the world too terrified to sharpen even a kitchen knife in Brooklyn.

After their conversation, Alec left Raphael alone in the observation room. Distracted allies were never much help, but Alec didn’t judge Raphael for needing a minute. Watching an ally hurt someone the same way you had been hurt was disconcerting, to say the least. Alec had lain hands on Raphael for what he’d done with Izzy, but even in his current frame of mind Alec knew that watching a handler work was a different kind of encounter. The kind that called for a discussion with a higher power, Alec assumed, if that was something that could be comforting to a person. It seemed in line with a man who brought up angelic mercy at an Institute blacksite. A Catholic thing to do, maybe. Izzy might have said once that Raphael still practiced, as best he could.

Alec had learned that a handler’s concern was the body, not the soul, at thirteen. The Director had taken his year to Berlin. They had watched from behind two-way glass as a grey-eyed handler ripped into a werewolf lieutenant who wouldn’t give her alpha up. The alpha had been growing his pack with pretty Mundanes lured in from nightclubs. Sometimes, he’d slipped: teeth sinking too deep, tearing into fragile Mundane flesh and shredding his victim’s most precious veins. Alec still remembered the photos his class had been briefed with. The one that Alec continued to sometimes see behind his eyelids had stared at him with Izzy’s dark eyes, sixteen years old and peering up in agony from a mask of arterial spray. Her lipstick had smeared into the blood. 

The handler had broken the wolf in perhaps twenty minutes. She’d caressed her naked breast with her gloved hand, then sunk her fingers into the holes she’d gouged out of her gut with a pair of silver claws. The wolf had flopped like a landed fish, too busy with fighting for air to scream. Werewolves did need to breathe, unlike vampires. _Breathing_ was a difference you had to be careful of, if you were used to working mostly with one or the other. It could mean that you needed to change up your entire pacing, let alone your tools.

The handler had bent forward and whispered something to the wolf. She had been spilling safehouse locations before the handler could even pull away. Later, during the class’s debrief with the handler, one of the other students had asked what she had said. The woman, so perfectly blank-faced in the work room that Alec had thought that she could have been carved from marble, had blushed red hot. _“You’re too young for those kinds of threats, kid,”_ she’d mumbled, her embarrassment letting her German accent slip through her perfect Alicante English. 

Later that afternoon, back at the Academy, the Director had explained that the handler had threatened genital mutilation. He had chuckled. _“I cannot imagine why she found that something you mustn’t yet know.”_ They had then moved to a lesson about the anatomy of warlocks and their various marks. The Academy mess had served spaghetti that night for dinner. Alec hadn’t eaten a bite, but he’d still thrown up the moment he’d locked his dorm’s bathroom door. He didn’t remember stopping. He only remembered the next morning, waking up with his face stuck to the toilet bowl. 

Now, Alec didn’t feel nauseous. He was icy all the way down, cool and smooth. He had only learned how to freeze after Berlin, while sitting in the Director’s office.

_“It’s okay if you can’t reach this level of devotion, Mr. Lightwood. Not everyone can.”_

The Director didn’t have a face, in Alec’s memories. Or, rather, he had a face like someone had drawn a glamour rune over it one too many times, and now it was stuck permanently out of focus. But Alec remembered his voice: firm but soft—the voice Alec used with those flighty new recruits. It was ingrained in Alec, he sometimes thought, deeper than Maryse and Robert’s voices could ever be. 

_“But your sister, Isabelle, she is about the age now that you were when you started training here. Isn’t she?”_

Alec had been fifteen, and Izzy, twelve. That year, she had insisting on wearing her hair in two long Dutch braids that Alec had dutifully weaved every morning. She had lost a stubborn baby tooth in the front recently, so she’d had a little lisp. It hadn’t stopped her from debating every professor at the Academy on every topic they dared to bring up or beating students twice her size on the training field. She had just discovered lip gloss. Consequently, she had pressed big, sparkly kisses onto Alec’s cheek—his reward for meeting her early to do her hair.

Alec had breathed once, slowly, and for the first time experienced the curious feeling of every blood cell in his veins going negative zero.

_“I would like to go back to the workroom, now. Please, sir.”_

_“I had thought as much, Mr. Lightwood. I am sure that you will do us proud.”_

And Alec had. 

Looking down from the platform over Ops, Alec purposefully pushed the memories away. So much more always leaked into him with the cold than just the propensity for violence. That was always under his skin, a never-ending thrum woken in him young and leashed tightly to his soul. Sometimes, Alec knew that he slipped. The cold made it easier—effortless, _blissful_—but sometimes even his warmest, happiest skin couldn’t contain the rage. He tried. But trying, Maryse had snapped once, meant sometimes failing. It was better to just _do_. 

Now, Alec didn’t have to _do_. Or try. His rage had not been so free since he’d graduated the Academy. He felt it filling him up, standing tall in his gut until his fingers curled with its familiar grasp. His shoulders relaxed, falling back into an easy rest. He walked lighter, more fleetly. He didn’t feel the usual pressure shoving him down. Alec was so anxious, sometimes, though not in the trembly, shaken way. Maryse would have never suffered a child like that. But he often felt tight, like an overdrawn bow with a string ready to snap. His jaw sometimes ached at night from the perpetual clench. Tension headaches regularly ruled his mornings and late evenings.

Magnus had helped. He—no. Alec couldn’t go there. Not yet. 

Mercifully, boots tapped familiarly up the stairs behind Alec. The steps were taken two at a time and made barely any noise on the twanging metal. And, with the ease of a long-established pattern, they broke Alec out of his mind. Turning, Alec watched Jace ascend, black-clad and grim-faced. His stormy expression cleared as he sighted Alec, his eyes shifting to something complicated as he approached. Something like sorrow. 

It glanced off Alec. Ice as thick as his was hard to break.

Then, “Parabatai,” Jace murmured. He didn’t slow much as he approached, but fluidly gripped Alec’s forearm and pulled him into a tight embrace.

_Oh_, Alec thought distantly, blinking. Jace always had been the sledgehammer in his life. Against his better wishes, his free arm came up to lay over Jace’s shoulders. He was warm to the touch, and his arm curled firmly around Alec’s nape when Alec didn’t pull back immediately. Standing a few precious seconds under Jace’s guard, he thought, _I must really look a mess_. 

“You look fine,” Jace reassured, mouth barely moving. His forehead landed gently against Alec’s. “But I feel how you’re not.

The part of Alec that reveled in the workroom snarled. How dare someone insinuate that Alec wasn’t capable of his duty? But that was the rage talking, so carefully crafted and raised to survive alone. It was rare that program graduates became parabatai to someone. Personally, Alec thought that it was because his kind didn’t have enough soul left at sixteen to give a chunk to another person, let alone to shelter a part of someone else’s with their own. The last, before Alec, to manage it had—well. Alec didn’t like to think about it. He just gripped Jace tighter, forcing himself to warm, to patch up the holes, to lash the rage back down where it couldn’t hurt anyone. Or anyone important, in any case.

“It was you, wasn’t it? Who broke Ross?” Jace whispered into Alec’s silence, unbothered by how close they still stood even as the embrace ended. Jace didn’t like to be touched unless he was cruising, and Alec almost never did. But exchanging soul bits with someone made them an exception to rules like that.

Feeling like he owed Jace the confirmation for what he already knew, Alec nodded. Ross was the first time he’d worked someone over since becoming Jace’s parabatai. He had no idea how it might have felt on Jace’s end of the bond. In the moment, it hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered. Just the names, the addresses, the bloodied breadcrumbs that would lead him to Magnus—

The thing inside Alec thrashed. His tenuous control flew away. Pulsing rage tore through his body anew, leaving Alec breathless with it. He wanted blood on his hands. He wanted his quiver light on his back as he stooped to pluck his lethal arrows from the eyes of his enemies. He wanted warm bodies screaming up their lives under his knives. He wanted his soldiers’ gear soaked a deeper black. And he wanted Magnus, safe, back at the loft, their home—and the rest of the world too terrified to sharpen even a kitchen knife in Brooklyn. 

“Alec,” Jace breathed, blue and brown eyes blown equally huge.

Cursing himself, Alec fought for control. He tucked Magnus back and away, safe in a guarded part of his heart that Alec didn’t visit often. It was different, out here. In the workroom, where time was meaningless and rage had a target, Alec could lose himself in memories. In Magnus. The workroom—for a handler, at least—was _safe_. Emotions, certain kinds of them, were good and useful. Alec hadn’t _wanted_ _to_ think of Magnus in there, but he had been _able_ _to_ with no ill effect. With a positive effect, even. That safety ended at the threshold. The world outside the workroom, a world where Magnus was taken, already threatened Alec’s control too much without his worthless heart adding fuel to the fire. A useless, distracting fire. 

“I can’t talk about this now, Jace,” Alec said. He stepped away from his parabatai, turning his gaze instead to the huge screens that dominated the front wall of Ops. Data of all kinds played silently on, changing and blinking and disappearing as it was updated, corroborated, or discarded.

It was a mistake to look at it. On one screen, Magnus walked though several loops of grainy CCTV footage, seconds between each footage loop, beautiful eyes staring at his phone until he vanished between cameras six and seven. Accompanying the loops was a snapshot pulled from a camera in the loft’s lobby. It showed Alec and Magnus coming home the night before. They were kissing in the photo, a quick peck over arms burdened down with takeout as they waited for the elevator. Magnus would have usually portaled, or just summoned the food, but while he’d been Mundane he’d discovered that he sometimes liked taking little outings. And Alec, as was usual, liked whatever let him spend a few quiet minutes with Magnus.

Alec swallowed, eyes skating over to the red-bordered, Clave-file photo of Magnus that dominated the top corner. “ALL AVAIL. UNITS FIND AND RECOVER” was typed clearly across the top, while below the most pertinent details of Magnus’s body and history glowed in blaring white bullet points. His fiancé had been reduced to a missing person’s report—an asset for Alec’s Shadowhunters to locate and bring home. Alec had always thought that he would die before something like this could happen. He had thought that he would leave a world behind where this scenario was impossible.

The rage stirred, cold and wild. He slammed the door on it. _Useless._

He tore his eyes away from the screen. “Brief me,” Alec ordered.

As though summoned from the aether by his words, Underhill appeared at Alec’s side. “Ross confirmed our working theory. He had been stalking Magnus for about six weeks, waiting for a window. When Magnus decided to walk the five blocks to meet Dr. Loss, he took his chance. He bumped into Magnus on the street, knocked him out with an injection, and pulled him into an alley where a waiting warlock associate portaled them here.” 

With a gesture, a decrepit grey warehouse materialized on the screen closest to Alec. It slumped on the waterfront like the corpse of some great beast, dead before it could struggle to dry land. Little wonder that tracking had proved ineffective, then. The racing numbers at the bottom of the image told Alec that he was watching live footage, the picture crystal-sharp and precise. A disconnected part of his brain noted that the recon division had really been in top form today. 

Underhill gestured again and other angles appeared, revealing a main entrance, a loading dock, and a single ignored-looking emergency exit. The blueprints spread out alongside the live feeds. The building was two storeys, cement-block, almost windowless, and had a basement. A fortress from New York’s industrial boom. 

“It’ll be a bitch to get into,” Jace muttered, scowling over his crossed arms.

“And that’s assuming that there are no magical enhancements,” Underhill agreed.

Alec blinked. He catalogued the information. “Give me Ross’s bosses.”

Underhill gestured again. The warehouse remained, joined by black and white security footage stills of a woman and a man. They were turned away from the camera, her long hair doing a better job of hiding her face than his newsboy cap did for him. “Meet Etel and Benedek Barany,” Underhill said. “Sibling Hungarian nationals for about the last hundred years, wanted by the Clave for about the last fifty. They’re loners, so no clan affiliation, but they consider themselves businesspeople.”

“What’s their business?” Alec asked, knowing from Underhill’s uncharacteristic pause that he wasn’t going to like it.

Underhill swallowed. “People, sir.”

“Fucking _Raziel_,” Jace snarled.

Alec blinked again. He reminded himself that he had already known as much from Ross. He swallowed, then focused on pulling each one of his fingernails out of his palms before blood could spill down over his knuckles. “Continue, Underhill.”

“It looks like they cut their teeth preying on displaced person camps following the Second World War, then continued working behind the Iron Curtain,” Underhill said. Images appeared on the screen in time with his words and flicking fingers. “Their Mundane victims have been found in bleeder dens all over Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and China. More recently, they’ve been involved with the newborn vampire trade. They make fledglings, addict them to whatever’s on hand, and sell them to other clans as cannon fodder.”

“Why wasn’t I made aware that they were in New York?” Alec asked. His tone implied that whoever had failed to inform him of such an obvious threat would soon be serving the Angels in a more personal sense than Alec could offer on earth.

Underhill shifted. Alec was beyond moderating himself for others’ comfort, however. “They’re not, sir. The London Institute has confirmed that the siblings are in their jurisdiction. They appear to be preparing for some kind of event. The whole European Downworld is whipped up over it.” Underhill took a quick breath. “London and other Institutes also report large-scale Mundane disappearances across most major Western European cities, tentatively connected to the Baranys’ organization. The Mundane governments think it’s some weird illegal immigration trend, since most of the missing are undocumented.”

“And without bodies turning up, the Mundanes care even less,” Jace sneered.

Underhill nodded. “I’d say the siblings have stepped up their operations by at least double. But it’s also not just Mundanes. Downworlders are going missing, too. London doesn’t know what to make of it.”

Alec nodded slowly, a picture forming in his mind. “Other Downworlders like Magnus, right? High warlocks, vampire clan leaders, werewolf alphas, Seelie knights—all leaders who could have stepped on the Baranys’ toes?”

Underhill paused, scrolling through the list of names he had preparedly kept on hand. After a minute, he nodded. “The only Shadow World faction they haven’t touched is us.”

Alec snorted. “And so, the Clave has time to wait for the Downworld to beg.”

“Sir?” Underhill asked cautiously.

“In most of the rest of the world, Downworld communities are a lot more disparate than we’ve grown used to here,” Alec explained. “Valentine didn’t terrorize them into working together like in New York. It’s a hard sell to get vampire and werewolf leaders to even speak each other’s names in Europe, let alone work together with other Downworlders against a threat like the Baranys. Especially when, I bet, no one really knows for sure who is working with the Baranys.”

“Which is where the Clave usually steps in,” Jace added, quick to pick up Alec’s train of thought.

“But the Clave has been making a point of staying out of Downworlder business lately, both to distance us from Valentine and because Shadowhunter numbers don’t support it like we used to,” Alec continued. “And maybe a little because of the racket I’ve made in New York. That’s how the council will try and spin it, at least.”

“But if enough Downworlders grow desperate enough to invite the Clave in…” Underhill added.

“Then the Clave essentially has carte blache to end the threat, as far as the Accords are concerned,” Alec said.

“And set up whatever kind of shop in Europe the Clave likes in the power vacuum,” Jace finished. He frowned. “But why take Magnus?”

Alec turned to Underhill. “Get a team scouring the New York crime database. Pay special attention to cases where we know or suspect a missing person is a Downworlder. Create a brief and have all of that information and what we know about the Baranys sent to every Downworld leader in the city. Catarina Loss will handle the warlocks. Put a draft on my desk for my final approval. You have ten hours. Go.”

Underhill, smart man that he was, went.

“Alec, what the hell?” Jace asked. “I know this is a big deal, but I thought—”

“If you say that I should be focusing more on Magnus right now, I will not be held responsible when I lay you out on this platform,” Alec said, icily calm.

Jace closed his mouth, but he rocked back on his heels. He wasn’t dropping it. He was just waiting for Alec to explain.

Alec breathed, once out and slowly back in. “The Downworld is Magnus’s primary priority. He would never forgive me if I left it unprotected in his absence.” _He almost didn’t, the last time_.

Jace sighed. “Okay. Yeah, that’s a point. But why aren’t we ripping into that warehouse right now? My people are waiting on your word.”

Alec swallowed. He counted to five. “I don’t think he’s there.”

“What?” Jace snapped. “But you tortured Ross, you heard—”

“I did, Jace, but I also saw that damned video,” Alec snarled. With a tap on the iPad he’d been cradling since stepping into Ops, Alec brought up his personal nightmare and froze on one excruciating frame. Alec couldn’t look at it again right now—the rage was so, so close—but he knew what he’d seen. He held it out to Jace.

Jace winced, taking the pad like it was soaked in acid. He stared at the frame, his horror rolling thickly off him and into Alec through the bond. “What am I supposed to be seeing, Alec?”

“The light, Jace,” Alec replied, staring at the building up on the screen. “How could that much natural light possibly get into that warehouse?”

Jace was silent a beat. “That bastard. Ross must have lied. Can’t you tell—?”

“I can, actually,” Alec said, cutting him off again. “Ross wasn’t lying. He really did drop Magnus off at the warehouse. But I think the warehouse is just that—a drop point, maybe a containment area. Like a stock room at the back of a store.”

Jace grimaced. “Where is he, then?”

Alec gestured toward the screen and enlarged the photo of the impressive tower the London Institute had confirmed was the Baranys' newest base. “If I were going to throw a party, both to celebrate the launch of my new business foray into the West and to prove how much better I am than every other Downworlder alive, I would do it at my sparkly palace in the sky.”

“Fuck," Jace swore, disgusted. He frowned deeper and crossed his arms, repeating, "But why _Magnus_?” 

There were a lot of things that Alec could have replied with. That Magnus hadn’t spent hundreds of years waiting around for New York to be important. That he’d lived myriad lives, many of them extremely influential, across the entire world. High Warlock of Brooklyn might have been the fanciest title the Warlock Council had yet to foist on him, but Magnus had almost always been a powerful figure. And he was the heir to Edom, a cat now out of the bag after the mess with Asmodeus. He had _destroyed_ Edom, a feat thought impossible. He’d saved Idris, helped stop Valentine Morgenstern, bested Lilith—and, oh yes, he was about to be the first Downworlder to marry in Alicante, into one of the oldest Nephilim lines. Hell, Alec’s parents had tried to _murder_ Magnus; twenty years later, Magnus was making their heir his husband. Alec wasn’t unaware of how their marriage looked to many people.

To prove your unassailable dominance over the Shadow World entire, who was there to choose to abuse, humiliate, and torture _other_ _than_ Magnus Bane?

But Alec didn’t have time to explain all of that. And, frankly, he was starting to feel his twenty-four-hour day. Terror-born adrenaline kept Alec moving, thinking, but it had been pumping since he’d received that video. If Jace was one of those many who couldn't see past Magnus's sparkly persona, Alec wasn't sure he had the wherewithal to force him to.

So, Alec breathed slowly once again and forced himself to shrug. “I guess it’s just not a party without him.”

* * *

After a moment’s calculative thought, Alec had sent Jace and his command to take the warehouse. There were risks—it could spook the Baranys, and it might wear down Alec’s best fighters—but Alec didn’t have another choice. If the Baranys were using the building as a storehouse, Alec had to free the victims as soon as he could. And if a few of the Downworlders were willing to testify to the Clave about it, even better. The best case, of course, would be if Jace could land the warlock the Baranys were using to portal people in New York. Such a big operation probably used multiple warlocks; finding just one wouldn’t end the attacks. But finding the one Ross had worked with to take Magnus? Their confessions would directly support each other. And Alec wanted to give the Clave a clean, tight picture that couldn’t be misinterpreted. 

Alec needed solid evidence to shove in the Clave’s face. Evidence that proved that Alec had to move, _now_, fuck the politics or playing nice with London_. _Showing up with just Magnus’s kidnapping wouldn’t do it. The Clave was a different animal than Alec’s Institute. New York’s Shadowhunters knew Alec. They were _his_. Maryse, Robert, Lydia, Aldertree—all of them had taken the title back, but not in anyway that had left Alec with less duties. The New York Institute had begun turning to Alec’s hand the first time his parents had ducked off to Idris, and it had never stopped. But the Clave had no devotion to Alec. He could name at least five members who would deride him as hysterical; a crying pansy willing to risk good Shadowhunter lives for his warlock. Alec refused have his hands tied by people who were so _asinine_.

A ping in his ear let Alec know that he had a call. Decisively, Alec signed his name on the report Underhill had left for him—done in five hours, not the ten allotted; Alec loved his people—and sent it back. Underhill would handle Alec’s revisions and the report’s dispersal. In less than an hour, New York’s Shadow World would be briefed on the traitorous predators in their midst. Magnus wasn’t any closer to being found, but at least his people would be better protected.

“Lightwood,” Alec said, accepting the call. He rubbed his eyes and drank from his forth black coffee while Jace’s voice filled his ear.

“If all our missions went this smoothly, Valentine would have never touched the Cup,” Jace chirped. His tone dragged a smirk out of Alec. Though the physical distance between them dampened the connection, Alec could feel the adrenaline coursing through Jace’s veins. It had been a good fight, the kind that Shadowhunters thrived on.

Leaning back in his chair, Alec shifted his rubbing to his temple. “Not too smoothly, I hope?” Raziel knew that they’d stumbled before, mistaking a trap for a good fight.

“I don’t think so,” Jace hummed. Alec imagined that he was bouncing a little, still keyed up from the fight and craving another round. Alec was almost envious; Angel blood _loved_ a good fight. “Like I thought, it was a bitch getting in here. Lots of warlocks pissed that we’d ripped up their wards. Enough doped-up baby vamps to fill a couple of graveyards, controlled by some other assholes. But we had enough people that it barely mattered. Shit, Alec, our guys are so used to nightmares like Valentine’s Forsaken and bat-shit Asmodei or Lilith demons that normal Downworlders barely phased us.” 

“I’m glad that the last year has been a valuable training opportunity,” Alec snorted. Still, Jace’s point was a good one. New York had recently seen more action, and _worse_ _action_, than any Institute since Johnathan Shadowhunter’s days. Sometimes, Alec wondered what that meant for his soldiers.

“Never an opportunity wasted,” Jace said. Alec felt Jace’s feral grin ghost over his own face. “Anyway, some of these bastards are still alive. And you were right, by the way. There’s, like, a billion people in cages. It’s fucking awful. My guys are wrapping up the surviving assholes for you, but what’s the plan for the victims?”

“How many, Jace?” Alec asked, rubbing harder at the aching space between his eyes. He needed to eat something. A Stamina rune only helped if the body had energy to amplify, and Alec was hitting the point where coffee wasn’t enough. But Alec wasn’t certain that he would hold down anything he dared to eat. Once he’d memorized the Barany’s penthouse blueprints, he’d poured over the siblings’ complete file. The Baranys liked their victims young and beautiful, and then they destroyed every pretty thing about them. They created emaciated bodies silently dying from blood loss; shrieking, starving infant vampires mad with coked-up bloodlust. London had made tentative connections to the dissembled, shredded corpses of werewolf fighting rings. To body-parts harvesting for the black magic market. 

Picking up his stele, Alec drew a Nutrition rune on his thigh. The feeling of being satiated washed over Alec. Desperate times, desperate measures.

Jace blew out a breath. “Seven assholes, if the asshole with the fucked leg stops irritating me by whining like a little bitch,” Jace hissed, obviously for the benefit of whichever henchman was getting on his nerves.

“Jace,” Alec gently redirected.

Jace blew out a breath. “We freed probably fifteen victims. All races except us. They mostly look like our age or a little older. No kids, thank Raziel.”

As Jace spoke, Alec carefully composed a fire message. He sent a copy each to Raphael, Luke, Meliorn, and Catarina, alerting them that members of their factions had been located during an Institute raid. The implied _get here now_ was hopefully blatant enough that Alec wouldn’t have to make any decisions about their people beyond the absolutely necessary. In that vein, Alec asked, “Injuries?” 

“They’re all pretty roughed up—New Yorkers don’t go down without a fight,” Jace said, a little proud.

Alec hummed. He snatched up the two fire messages that had appeared in quick succession and read them. He stood, nodding to himself, and was gratified when the room didn't sway. It seemed his runes would hold, for now. “Okay. Use the support vehicles to bring them here. Warn Izzy that the infirmary will be our collection point. Catarina and Luke are on their way. For all I know, Raphael is still lurking somewhere around here.”

“Yes, sir,” Jace replied. Alec could feel him smirking. “And, by the way, Alec?”

“Yeah?” Alec responded, already consumed with his next set of plans.

“You were right, Magnus wasn’t here. But we found an asshole that matches Ross’s description of that warlock,” Jace said, voice gone flat.

Alec didn’t see why his brother felt so suddenly grim. That was the best news Alec had received all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are again. I entirely blame all of your lovely comments for motivating me to write more of this twisted little fic so quickly. I honestly read each comment several times over, so I hope you all know how much I appreciate the support. I've seen some ugly things go down in the comments of this fandom, so I was actually a little hesitant to post, but you've all been so wonderful that I really felt encouraged to get to work. So, thank you, and I hope to hear from your more about this chapter! I'm not sure it's quite as exciting as the first one. I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about our antagonists, though, so I hope they came across as believably vile. Our Mundane world can be so horrible that I can really only imagine the kind of awful supernatural people with magic and demons can get up to. 
> 
> Here's a secret: When I started writing this chapter, it was actually from Jace's POV. I currently have about 900 words of his take on all this. I know a lot of you were interested in seeing other characters' perspectives on Alec in war-mode. However, I think this fic will stay with Alec. My original intention was to meditate on him, and what would need to happen to push him over some of his moral lines. And, honestly, I feel like this fic has so much going on that throwing in other POVs might be confusing or jarring. But would you like to read the Jace chunk, and maybe some other vignettes along those lines from other POVs? I was thinking something like a 5 + 1 thing. Anyway, please let me know what you think! I really love hearing from you!


	3. Command me to be well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Magnus bleeds a little more every second I waste talking to you,” he said, letting his voice be languid and deep and like licking blood off claws. “Give me the mission,” he promised, “and the Clave will have more blood on its hands than we’ll ever be able to burn away.”

The warlock’s blood was still splattered on Alec’s cheek when his earpiece buzzed. “Lightwood,” he answered without second thought.

“Mr. Lightwood,” Consul Jia Penhallow greeted, “I hear you are elbow deep in our recent unpleasantness. Color me unsurprised.”

“I don’t like trouble in my city,” Alec replied, flat. He hadn’t been expecting a call from Penhallow. He washed his hands, then wiped the blood off his face with a cloth while he considered what this meant.

“Or with your fiancé,” Penhallow added. “I do offer my personal sympathy, and that on behalf of the Clave.” She sounded like she meant it. Alec didn’t expect anything less from her.

“Thank you, Consul,” he said, instinctively completing the expected ritual. He paused, then, and fell into an automatic parade rest. “I do have an idea of how the Clave could best express their sympathies,” he said, adopting in his tone the appropriate balance of caution and confidence. It came surprisingly easily to him. His usual nerves, he suspected, were lying drowned in a pool of blood.

“I suspected you might, Mr. Lightwood.” Penhallow sounded tired, Alec thought. He flattered himself by thinking that it was a personal response he inspired in her. “What do you propose?” she asked.

“Give me control over the operation,” Alec demanded—but _gently_. Steel fist in a velvet glove. He heard his mother’s heels clicking up a hallway in his memory, her fingers drifting lightly over his shoulder.

“Most of the victims are European, and the perpetrators are based in London—”

“You only have that intelligence because of New York,” Alec rebutted. “And to be frank, Consul, the Clave wouldn’t be so concerned about this unpleasantness if not for New York.”

“Mr. Lightwood, I assure you that the Clave takes all offenses within the Shadow World with the same degree of concern,” Penhallow dutifully iterated.

“I’m sure,” Alec soothed, “but it’s been happening for years, Jia. No one did anything. Barely anyone noticed. Not until it happened in New York.”

“To your boyfriend, you mean,” Penhallow jabbed, dropping her officiality. “You’re biased, Alec. How would it look if I handed this over to you instead of London?”

“It would look like you’re adhering to the Accords,” Alec returned.

The penny didn’t take long to drop. “Those stipulations are for Shadowhunters, Alec.”

“Exactly,” Alec said, “I am a Shadowhunter, and vampires have my fiancé. Give me the mission, Jia, or I will sue the whole damn Clave for breaking the Accords.”

There was silence on the line. “You’re serious about him,” Jia said. She sounded wondering. “This--_relationship_\--isn’t just political for you.”

With the last stitch of his self-control, Alec held back wild laughter. “Whatever gave you the idea that politics had anything to do with Magnus and I?”

Jia hummed. “I have obviously misjudged you,” she commented, low and faux-idle. 

In his mind’s eyes, Alec could see her revising her notes. Imogene Herondale had painted watercolors, and Malachai Dieudonné had played violin. Comparatively, Jia Penhallow seemed the type to write out her thoughts. Alec might have to look into that. “So it seems,” he replied.

“You can’t talk your way out of this, Alec,” Jia finally said, once the silence became unbearable. “This isn’t a diplomatic mission. We aren’t really interested in prisoners. Blood must be spilled. Downworlder blood.”

Alec didn’t blink. “That suits me perfectly.”

“I’m serious,” Jia snapped, suddenly passionate. “I know your style, Alec. You want to be everyone’s friend. You want to change the Clave until we’re more palatable. But sometimes justice _isn’t_.”

Alec didn’t bother arguing with her. Her logic was flawed, but fixing it wasn’t his goal. He didn’t even mind that her perception of him was so apparently skewed. That could be useful. He wanted one thing from her and fighting her wouldn’t give it to him. “Jia,” he purred instead, letting his whole body relax. In the air, his fingers twitched for a blade. “Magnus bleeds a little more every second I waste talking to you,” he said, letting his voice be languid and deep and like licking blood off claws. “Give me the mission,” he promised, “and the Clave will have more blood on its hands than we’ll ever be able to burn away.”

He heard her breath catch. Sometimes, Alec thought that violence was the only language the Angels spoke; for certain, it was the mother tongue of Raziel’s children. “I look forward to seeing your work, then, Mr. Lightwood,” Jia responded, voice throaty with wariness and delight.

“I won’t have any internal conflict, Consul,” Alec affirmed, letting her lead the conversation again. It was like dancing, he realized belatedly. He remembered his lessons as a youth, his mother’s cold eyes watching as he tripped over his feet. Suddenly, her insistence on those lessons made so much more sense. “Do me the favor of informing London of our parameters yourself?” It would give her something to do; a measure of the control that Alec knew she loved.

“You have my word, Mr. Lightwood, that London will know who to kneel to. Will that be all?” Jia asked. He saw her shuffling her papers primly in his mind's eye.

“Indeed,” Alec agreed. “You’ll have my report in two days. Thank you for speaking to me.” His tone, he made certain, was perfectly demure in his victory. 

“Oh, Mr. Lightwood,” Jia said. He could hear the smile pulling at her lips. “Our conversations are always so interesting. Don’t ever worry that I will ignore you.”

The click in his ear told him that she’d hung up—her way of preserving her claim on the last word, Alec supposed. That was fine, too. Dancing was give and take, and Alec had what he wanted. He hadn’t even had to go in person to argue his case. Alicante wanted this problem solved. He had been smart to send New York’s findings to Jia directly. For all her Clave loyalty and mannerisms, she did seek the relative stability of the Shadow World. And she was _reasonable_. She knew the Baranys had kicked the hornet’s nest too hard by taking Magnus and taunting Alec. Her game was up, and she wouldn’t risk making the outcome sour by giving New York the incentive to go rogue. Or worse, risk letting the Downworlders scrap it out themselves and perhaps prove that they didn’t need the Clave at all. Whatever possibility scared her more, it was to Alec’s benefit.

Stripping his workroom clothes, Alec tossed them into a biohazard bag and left them to be burned. Downworlder blood never quite came out of fabric. It shared enough properties with ichor that Mundane remedies didn’t work, and enough properties with human blood that anti-demonic stain-removers didn’t either. Some handlers took advantage of that, using the same clothes case after case and wearing the evidence of their long, brutal histories like a piece of precious art. Alec thought that such practices were messy. The unknown scared people more efficiently. Often, its anticipation was all that was needed.

Shaking his head, Alec pulled on clean pants and double-checked his shoes. He spared a moment to be grateful that the warlock’s blood had avoided those when he’d nicked that artery. He’d stopped the bleeding, but blood had gotten everywhere. Thankfully, the threat of bleeding out again had been enough to make her talk. He was buttoning his fresh white dress shirt when his eyes fell on his jacket. It was charcoal, with a banded collar and six silver buttons branded with the Lightwood crest. He’d been planning on wearing it to stare down Jia, knowing that, despite everything, old family names still played well in Idris. But Jia preferred verbal games to theatrics, and she was a preemptive player. Good to know.

A disgusted shiver went down Alec's spine. He hated these games, and every second he walked another step deeper into them. But if it saved Magnus--_so be it_, Alec thought. 

Buttoning his jacket, Alec strode up to Ops. “Brief me,” he ordered as he passed through the doors.

As always, Underhill materialized at Alec’s word. “I’ve been on the line with the High Warlock of London, as well as the Alpha, the Clan leader, and the Seelie Knight responsible for the region. After some wrangling, all of them have approved your plans to take the tower," he reported.

“The London Institute?” Alec asked.

Underhill frowned. “You told me not to contact them.”

“Yes,” Alec agreed, “but have they contacted us?”

“No, not that I’ve heard,” Underhill said, curious now.

Alec nodded. “You should expect a call. Consul Penhallow will be informing them shortly that we have jurisdiction over the operation. Expect some posturing, but they will submit. The moment they do, take a team over and get their Ops running to our standards. I want full surveillance on the tower, plus actual eyes on every exit and entry.”

“Yes, sir,” Underhill said. “Sir?”

Alec gestured for him to continue. His eyes were fixed on the feeds. They were full now not of Magnus, but of the Barany’s skyscraper: a looming glass pillar named the Helion. Pretentious. What Alec took most issue with, however, was that its designer had built the tower with invaders in mind. There were minimal points of entry, and, as tall as it was, it was built to take a beating. Even with just a Mundane defense force, getting in would be a challenge. Raziel knew who was actually protecting the place. Vampires, at the very least, but the Baranys liked warlocks and werewolves, too. Alec had about four feasible plans in mind, but he wouldn’t be certain which to go with until he had a better sense of the place.

“Uh. Catarina Loss and Raphael Santiago are in your office?” Underhilll said, hesitantly invading Alec’s musings.

Alec felt a smirk tempt his lips. He really did like Underhill. “Thank you for letting me know. Meet with Jace and Isabelle, divide our forces into teams—one to take the Helion, one to run Ops in London, and a skeleton force to stay here. Someone also needs to coordinate both medical bays.”

“You think we’ll need both?” Underhill asked, frowning.

“I think we have no idea what we’re walking into,” Alec said, speaking the truth gently.

Underhill swallowed. “Noted, sir.” He saluted and turned on his heel, off to do Alec’s bidding.

Alec didn’t pause. He turned and sped away from Ops before someone could beg his attention, which always happened when he didn’t move quickly. He had half a mind to shoot an espresso, the tingle of tiredness sparkling at the edges of his awareness, but he couldn’t keep Catarina and Raphael waiting. Not when he had a favour to ask of them.

* * *

“Thank you for joining me,” Alec said when he arrived at his office.

“You’ve found Magnus?” Catarina interrupted. The skin was tight around her ageless eyes, and her glamoured-brown skin looked bloodless. She was terrified, Alec knew, but, like Alec and Raphael and everyone else in their world, she refused to show it.

“He’s in London,” Alec confirmed. “A pair of vampires have him at their skyscraper. The Clave has ordered me to take the whole building and kill anyone who tries to stop me.”

“Gods,” Catarina breathed.

Raphael said nothing, watching Alec with shark’s eyes. “Why did you ask us here?” he prodded.

Alec sat back in his chair. “I need you both to lead the team that extracts Magnus,” he revealed calmly. 

“Why would you need that?” Catarina asked. “Why would we even be there? I’m happy to help heal, or even portal people, but I’m not a warrior, Alec.”

“After you secure Magnus I would be in your debt if you offered your healing skills,” Alec said, genuine. There was no healer more skilled than Catarina Loss. He continued by saying, “The High Warlock of London has already sworn Warlocks to help with portaling and keeping up the glamours so the Mundanes don’t wonder what’s going on at the site.”

Catarina frowned. “Then why—?”

“Because this is going to be a nightmare, isn’t it?” Raphael said, cutting her off. Despite the tone, his words weren't a question.

Alec answered truthfully, anyway. “About four thousand Shadowhunters will be infiltrating a building with a maximum occupancy of one hundred thousand," he said. "We have no idea how many combatants will be inside or how many victims we will find. Judging from the nearest precedent-setting mission, it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

“And you don’t want to face Magnus covered in Downworlder blood,” Raphael concluded, condemnatory.

Alec inhaled slowly. “True,” he admitted. “I also don’t want probably the most powerful Warlock living to panic, surrounded by dozens of bloody Shadowhunters he might not recognize.”

“Alec,” Catarina said softly, “if you were there—”

“He’s been tortured for two days,” Alec said, cutting her off her kindness pragmatically. “They sent me a live feed. It’s how we found out he was taken.”

Raphael cursed. Alec didn’t really clock it. For a minute, he only saw Magnus’s terrified, sobbing eyes.

Mechanically shooing away the image, Alec continued his report. “It’ll be three days by the time we take the tower. I check the feed every few hours. He’s not seeing reality anymore, Cat. The only reason his magic hasn’t already decimated everything in a hundred-mile radius is because of the cuffs they have him locked in.”

“Shadowhunter cuffs,” Raphael sneered.

“Yes,” Alec said, “and finding out how the Baranys got a pair will be my next priority after they are dead.”

Silence settled, Raphael and Catarina grimacing with identical tightness. The Clave's power sat heavily in the air, but Alec wasn't phased. He would suffer no illusions about this mission's outcome.

“I’m sure it will be,” Catarina said, conciliatory. She sat up straighter in her seat and made purposeful eye contact with Alec. “What do you need us to do?”

By habit, not desire, Alec held her gaze. “You’ll be following Jace’s team in a twelve-person squad,” he explained. “Jace will secure the way. Once you’ve reached Magnus, portal him out—to New York, if you think he can handle it, or the London medical bay if you think he can’t go too far.”

“And the cuffs?” Raphael pushed.

“Come off the second you’re sure he won’t kill us all during a torture-driven panic attack,” Alec said. The words hollowed what was left of him out to deliver. Curious. He hadn’t thought that there was anything left in him at all.

Raphael sat back in his chair. “You’re awfully calm for someone whose one true love is being tortured to death. Well informed, too. Is it because you’re familiar with doling it out?”

“Raphael,” Catarina hissed, shooting a skittering glance at Alec.

Alec was unsurprised that Raphael had told her what Alec had done. Unsurprised, and not looking closely enough at his other emotions to judge what he might have else felt. Distantly, he supposed that he would never be allowed near Madzie again. A part of him was utterly destroyed by that, but there was nothing to be done for it. Perhaps he should have never been allowed near her in the first place. Perhaps the life that Alec could feel crumbling away under his fingertips was never the one that he was supposed to have.

“There are more than four thousand lives riding on what I decide to do in the next twenty-four hours,” Alec said. Keeping his tone level wasn't as hard as he, distantly, thought that it should be. When he looked to find anger at Raphael, there was none at his disposal. Instead, he simply added, “Tomorrow evening, you can judge how calm I am. Until then, Raphael, get out of my office.”

“With pleasure,” Raphael sneered. He glided out the door without another word.

“Alec,” Catarina began.

“It’s fine,” Alec said, intercepting her gentleness. “He’s worried. We all are.”

“But you’re not biting people’s heads off,” she said. Carefully, she reached across his desk and laid a hand on his arm. He blinked at it, unsure of what to do.

“He’s not wrong, Catarina,” Alec eventually said. “I’ve been doing—bad—things. Brutal things.”

“To find _Magnus_,” Catarina emphasized. She gripped his arm supportively, but she stayed quiet until Alec was forced by the silence to look at her again. “Alec,” she said once his full attention was hers, “you are not a bad man.”

“I ripped into a Warlock like she was candy floss,” Alec confessed, staring at her. “And I don't even regret it, Catarina, because it got me a step closer to finishing the mission.”

She looked at him firmly, a contrast to her gentle hand. “You shouldn’t lie, Alec," she said. "Not even when you want someone to punish you.”

Alec tore his eyes away from her face. Her words had turned something crucial in him fragile. He couldn't cope with the evidence of her open faith. “Thank you for helping, Catarina,” he replied at length. When other words wouldn't come, he added, “You and Raphael are the only ones he would trust to take care of him like this.”

“Except for you,” Catarina said, letting him go and standing. She had sensed his dismissal with her regular grace.

Without comment, Alec returned to his papers and let her comment pass—but that wasn’t enough for Catarina. “Stupid boy,” she tossed over her shoulder, a nimble hand on the doorframe. “One day,” she continued, glancing at Alec to make sure she had his attention, “he’ll convince you of how much you mean to him, and then the world will be a much brighter place for you.”

Alec swallowed, staring at her. “My world’s already brighter because of him. Don’t ever doubt that. I love him more—more than I thought I could love anyone. Ever.”

Catarina sighed. “I know, dear. That’s what makes your sorrow so hard to watch.” And she left.

Alec sat there, stunned, for a full minute. Then, he pulled himself to his feet and went to the cafeteria. He didn’t have time for Catarina’s words. He needed to focus only on the essentials. Food would still be impossible to consume, but coffee was the fluid of life. Fresh caffeine charging double time through his veins, Alec drew a fresh Stamina rune on his hip and went to find Jace.

* * *

“I’m going to go get Magnus back,” Izzy said, crossing her arms. She was dressed in full tactical gear, not the day-to-day personal leathers Shadowhunters usually wore. Black Kevlar fabric woven with silver strands to withstand werewolf teeth covered her from wrist to chin. Her boots had Silence runes stamped into the soles. Four wooden stakes and a dozen vials of holy water hung from her hips. She had to be wearing an extra ten pounds in Seraph blades and daggers, and those were just the weapons Alec could see.

Alec was similarly kitted out, and so were Jace and the other fifteen hundred Shadowhunters milling around Ops. It was the entire staff New York could spare, most of them somewhat new transfers from other Institutes—Valentine and subsequent disasters had sent much of New York’s old blood to Raziel. For most, Alec had been their superior for three months or less. Now, he was going to send some of them to their deaths. Alec tried not to think too deeply about that. There were so many terrible things to think about, and Alec had time to think about none of them with the attention they deserved.

Instead, he had to deal with Izzy. “I need you here,” he said for the second time in ten minutes.

“You want me out of the line of fire,” Izzy accused. Alec fought the urge to laugh, again. Recently, his days liked to oscillate between the horrifying and the absurd.

“That is the last thing I would ever ask you to do,” he told her.

Izzy hands perched on her hips, indicating a true tirade to come if Alec wasn't careful. “Then why keep me back? Why can’t I go to rescue my friend?”

“Because you are the best medic we have,” Alec snapped. “And our people are going to get hurt, Izzy. Some of them are going to die. And Raziel knows what condition we’re going to find the Baranys’ prisoners in. And I need someone I know is competent and diplomatic controlling that chaos, because I know nothing—literally nothing—about who London has on staff.”

Izzy swallowed, her righteous fury melting to reveal sisterly devotion. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have that training, you know? I hate the idea of you and Jace out there, alone, trying to find Magnus.”

He pulled her in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We won’t be alone," he murmured against her hair, "teams of ten, remember?”

Izzy sighed, pulling back. She put her hands on Alec’s arms and smirked. “That’s not what I meant, dummy. Three in, three out, remember?”

Alec softened. He always did, for Izzy. “We’ll have Clary,” he offered. He didn't tell her that Clary would be fighting with the reserve forces. Alec had grown to love her like another little sister, but nothing could convince him to send a soldier with less than a year's training into the middle of this nightmare.

Izzy laughed. “Well, now I really know we’ve all grown up if that’s your answer.”

Alec snorted. “Desperate times, I guess.”

“Hey,” Izzy said, “look at me.”

Alec shut his eyes. Why did everyone want to stare at him today? Alec didn’t like eye contact at the best of times. This was hardly the best of times. But he couldn’t refuse Izzy. Bundling up his annoyance, he met her dark brown eyes as ordered.

She put her hand on his cheek. For a guilty moment, he let himself lean into it. Izzy smiled at him. “We’ll get him back, big brother,” she promised, sincere to her bones. “I swear it. After all,” she grinned, “we got him back from Edom. How can this compare?”

Part of Alec wanted to fight her, to explain that this was an entirely different circumstance. Magnus had possessed his magic in Edom, to begin with. But the cuffs stole that away—again. And this wasn’t a fight, it was torture. Raw, pure torture. Not the lapping, unceasing embrace of the Agony Rune, which in Alec’s experience at least couldn’t get _worse_ once it hit the memories that tormented you the most. No, Magnus was at the hands of people who were still human enough to be _creative_. Creativity was the worst tool your handler could wield. Alec knew it. He’d received accolades and, literally, top marks for it.

“You’re right,” Alec said instead, and stepped away from her. “Jace?” he called, changing the topic.

From across the room, Jace gave him a thumbs up. Opposite Jace, Underhill also threw up a go sign, and Alec noted Catarina and Raphael near the front. It had been a fight to get Raphael to wear the armband with the Institute’s insignia, but it was the best Alec could come up with to minimize the chances of friendly fire. Mercifully, Catarina had sided with Alec and spelled Raphael's and her own to stay in place. His priorities ticked off, Alec nodded to the trio of Warlocks at the front of the room: Lorenzo Rey and two others Alec knew had Magnus’s approval. A portal large and powerful enough to move hundreds of Shadowhunters across the Atlantic sprung to life.

“Remember,” Alec called to his soldiers, having already given his big speech, “be brave, be careful, and do your duty.”

“Yes, sir,” echoed back to him, fifteen-hundred strong. Drawing power from his people, Alec nodded once to his sister. She had positioned herself away from his troops, joining the small army of medical staff already dressed in their uniform greens. Then he nodded to his parabatai, the man bringing up the rear of his forces.

“Alright,” Alec said to himself. Gesturing, he led his people forward into the bright and swirling lights.

* * *

Alec had been right. The Helion was a gruesome, nightmarish bloodbath.

As mercies went, however, London had been a huge one. Institute Head Highgarden was chipper, fifty, and a terrifying sniper. She’d nested herself in a building with lovely views of the Helion and taken to picking off runners and reinforcements. There had been some posturing, but Highgarden had a Wedded Union Rune on her wrist despite running her Institute alone. One conversation revealing that Alec’s fiancé was in the building and she’d acquiesced with knowing solemnity.

If Alec survived, he’d thank her personally again. But the odds were not good.

Underhill was in Alec’s ear, rattling to him stats of all kinds. If Alec hadn’t been trained to divide his attention, he’d have been dead by now. As it was, the noise bled into the battle cacophony around him, worthy of his attention only when something jumped out. “Sixth floor, status?” Underhill called, tracking their forces on the ground through the monitors set up in Ops. “Sixth floor clear,” Alec responded, letting loose a hawthorn arrow—a flying stake—into the heart of a vampire lunging for his throat. When nothing else came sprinting out of the darkness, he confirmed his call. The other four team captains on his floor echoed it. “Alpha teams, proceed to ninth floor,” Underhill ordered, directing them to the next floor that hadn’t yet been cleared. Alec copied and gestured for his team to move up the north-side emergency stairs, leaving the two Beta teams to hold the floor and begin assessing the scene.

“Have we breached the penthouse?” Alec asked, breathing even and controlled as he took the steps two at a time. He was wearing at least twenty pounds of body armour and weapons, but he felt weightless. Adrenaline was thicker in his veins than blood. He was so close to Magnus that his brain was dreaming up his sandalwood scent. Stupid. Irrational. He inhaled purposefully, soaking the coppery, rotting scent of blood and vampire ash into his lungs, reminding himself of reality and grounding himself there.

“No, sir,” Underhill responded, crystal clear. The Clave at least didn’t bear the sin of shitty equipment on their conscience.

Alec breathed. “Eyes on the Bryanys?”

“No, sir,” Underhill said.

Alec bit back a curse. Cursing hurt morale, or Alec would be spitting a blue streak. They approached the door to their next assigned floor. Alec signaled them forward. So far, the Bryanys’ goons had been taking a defensive stance, which was the second bit of proof Alec had of the divine. It allowed his men to take each floor one at a time, breaching and then clearing as they went. They were making good time, but it was hard fighting—proven by the fresh hell Alec led his team into on the ninth floor. A Shadowhunter’s corpse propped the door open; she’d been downed the second she'd made entry. Alec’s boots squished in her blood as he stepped carefully over her, but the sound was lost to the ravenous fight raging before her. Fuck, Alec thought. If all the floors were like this, even with the perimeter set up below, they would never reach the penthouse before the Baranys figured out a way of escape. Or started cleaning up their messes and killing prisoners that could testify—like Magnus.

“Sangreal,” Alec called to Highgarden’s second in command, “can you take the squad?”

“I can,” the tall Ethiopian agreed, “but where will you be?”

“I’m going hunting,” Alec quipped, driving the sharp, adamas-tipped end of his bow into the chest of a snarling werewolf going for Antony St. John’s back. “If we lose the Baranys now, we won’t find them again.”

Sangreal nodded, clapping Alec on the shoulder. “Raziel be with you, Lightwood. We’ll keep it covered here.”

“And Raziel aid your return,” Alec replied sincerely. He spared a second to survey the mess he was leaving his men behind to deal with: fifty shadowhunters outnumbered by twice over, at least. Blood and ash were thick on the industrial grey carpet, slicking the floor under their boots and filling the room with a ghastly smell. Whimpering screams and snarling growls met riotously with the grunting, heaving noise of Shadowhunters at work. In the darkness, shadowy cages lay just out of Alec’s view, containing Raziel knew what, but their targets were damned determined to prevent Alec’s soldiers form getting anywhere near them.

Turning on his heel, Alec wiped his stele sloppily over his flagging runes, heightening especially his Stealth, Strength, and Sure Footedness runes. Letting his bow dematerialize, he kept himself armed with a Seraph blade as he slunk out of the room and to the stairwell. The stairs couldn’t be how he got up. If Jace hadn’t breached the penthouse that way with twenty Shadowhunters, Catarina, and Raphael, Alec wouldn’t manage it alone. Making a judgement call, he tapped his com to Underhill.

“Do we have engagement on all floors but the penthouse?” he asked, taking the stairs to the next floor. The fighting turned out to be just as heavy as at the floor he’d left but there was the blessed advantage of not having the elevator doors block by corpses and fighting.

“Yes, sir,” Underhill replied immediately. “Jace has been trying to get in, but the wards are holding strong.”

“I bet,” Alec said. “Send the reserve units in on all active floors but the penthouse, Underhill.” Another five hundred fresh shadowhunters may just finish the fighting there.

“Yes, sir,” Underhill responded. He relayed the order, then paused. “Sir, where are you headed?”

“The thing about Warlocks,” Alec said, wedging his fingers into the crack between the closed elevator doors, “is that they always ward the exterior of buildings. Windows, doors, whatever. Elevators? Not so much.” Magnus did, now that Alec had pointed it out. Alec only hoped that the Baranys hadn’t thought to interrogate Magnus extensively about his warding practices.

“Clever,” Underhill breathed. “Um, if climbing up is your plan, you’re clear all the way up. According to my specs, the penthouse is accessed by a keycard, not another elevator system. The elevator car was also below you when we cut the power.”

“Perfect, Underhill, thank you,” Alec said as he lit up his Strength rune again and pulled. He was never so grateful to Raziel as when his runes burned bright and helped him yank the doors open. In this moment, heaving open the thick steel felt easier than strolling to the coffee shop around the corner from the loft.

“Lightwood!” a woman called. Alec turned to see Elizabeth Lovelace, bloody and staring at him.

She was one of his, so he gestured up and was pleased when understanding filled her face. “Cover me?” he asked.

Lovelace nodded once, serious, and signaled two of her lieutenants to join her in a loose ring around Alec. “Always a pleasure to, sir,” she said. “Raziel protect you.”

Alec loved his people. “May he protect you, too,” he blessed. Then, he was in the darkness and heaving himself up the steel cables.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! I hope it appeased~


	4. She demands a sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more unto the breach, Alec thought as he strode forward. I’m coming, Magnus. And nothing is going to stop me.

Even covered in durable leather gloves, Alec’s hand screamed. Fire crawled into his shoulders and back with every endless second that ticked by, spreading to his limbs and torso. His only blessings were that upper-body strength was demanded by archery and so was a certain felicity with scaling odd surfaces to find higher ground. Still, Alec was barely enduring. Desperation forced him on, pushing him to see through the exhaustion pulsing at his temples and put his hands one in front of the other. He had to order himself not to think; not of the pitch black drop below, nor the sinister darkness above. Inside the elevator shaft, his consciousness narrowed down to just a few things: the air cold on his battle-hot body, the stinging sweat rolling into his eyes, and every militantly controlled breath that he dragged into his lungs. Each hard-won inhale coated his mouth in metallic mustiness, threatening to choke him.

The temptation to let go was incredible, in the silence where even the Clave’s radio waves couldn’t penetrate. He was cut off, forced into an isolation that was far more terrifying to Alec than any threat of falling to his death. He was sacrificing contact with his soldiers at a crucial moment, selfishly reckless in his refusal to wait for Jace to somehow break the wards. Shame prickled him. _I can’t have both_, Magnus had told him once. Not his people and Alec. If that division were true, as Alec daren’t believe, then with every stubborn inch he climbed up—and every Shadowhunter corpse made below—Alec knew the side he was choosing. 

But the choice had been made. Alec’s path was set. All that was left was to see it through.

Though his loathing and terror tried to convince him that the climb would never end, with his runes he was finally able to make out the right floor. For a moment, he hung there and struggled to turn his brain back on. Brawn wouldn’t be able to force the doors open this time. After clinging to the cables for a two-dozen storey climb, Alec had neither the leverage needed nor the strength left. And that was assuming, of course, that the Baranys’ Warlocks really hadn’t warded the elevator doors. Alec’s continued breathing suggested that Alec had been right and they hadn’t, but Alec didn’t believe in optimism. If he was lucky with the doors, there could still be a conventional horde of muscle and weaponry waiting for him on the other side. But now wasn’t the time to think of that. Thankfully, what his people lacked in social progress was made up for by their technology—in this one case, at least.

Laboriously, Alec wound his legs tighter around the cable and clenched hard with his thighs. One arm curled around the steel, he rifled through his pocket with the other. He came out clutching an isolated explosive device; a small disk about the size of a silver dollar. Pressing the button, he threw it at the doors. It hit the metal with a thud and, mercifully, stuck. In the three seconds it took the doors to blow off their fixtures, Alec prayed shamelessly. And, after the doors fell like a thunderclap against the floor, he waited in the darkness and prayed harder.

Minutes passed, and, when only light greeted him through the gaping hole, Alec hauled himself up and swung his body onto solid ground. He landed hard. His limbs were too numb to tremble, let alone hold his weight, yet in a second he was on his feet and armed with his drawn bow. He stood there panting, sweat pouring down his face, muscles shrieking with the effort that keeping up his bow took. But there was no enemy to kill. Breathing deeply, Alec forced himself to let his bow dematerialize. With a slow exhale, he dropped his stance and palmed his stele. He was safe, as far as he could tell, and he needed to take every advantage of it that he could. He hit Stamina, Perseverance, and Strength first, then Sure-Footedness and Silence. His body came back online like an old computer: slow and stuttering at first, and then it burst to life. He breathed through the adrenaline rush, letting the strange ozone-like tang of angelic power soothe and strengthen him. 

After a moment’s consideration, Alec also lit up Calm Anger. It was an odd rune to bear, and Alec didn’t much like it. For a time, unbeknownst to Alec, Jace had burned Calm Anger onto his skin every morning. Weaning him off it after they were made parabatai had been hellish. But mood swings and tantrums felt better to be bound to than shark-like nothingness. Quietly, Alec suspected that Calm Anger was the rune that had most helped the Nephilim become the scourge the Downworld knew. Yet, it was undeniably useful . That was what made it so addictive, Alec figured.

Immediately, he felt the rabbiting beat of his heart ease. A feeling like cool water flooded under his skin, sliding between bone and muscle. His fear, exhaustion, and worry faded into the distance, and any positive emotions—his confidence in his people, his appreciation for London’s Institute, his _love_—felt like they were wrapped in cotton batting. A coppery craving rose on the back of his tongue, a bloody desire that would not quench until the rune ran out or Alec’s ends were met. His awareness narrowed down to that goal, faces of loved ones and allies fading to be replaced by those of his targets. It wasn’t an animalistic fury, nor was it a berserker rage. It was a rewiring, basic and smooth, until only warriorship remained on the forefront of the mind.

His mentality helpfully, _angelically _rearranged, Alec further assessed his surroundings. It was deadly quiet, the roar of battle that filled the floors under him uneasily absent. Instead, silent luxury filled his senses. The floors under his boots, even in this isolated hall, were gleaming white marble. Something faintly pleasant laced the air. Through the end of the hall, Alec marked towering windows that had to showcase a priceless London view. On the other end of the hall was an unremarkable service door. Alec drew closer to it, undeterred by the hall’s other decorative distractions, wondering…

If his mental image of the floor plans was correct, that door would lead to the staircase—to Jace, and his soldiers, Catarina, and Raphael. Alec felt a spectral brush of relief. If he could get Jace and the others in, then he wouldn’t have to face whatever the Baranys had in their pockets alone. While Alec was perfectly willing to do many desperate things, he would fight for the best odds he could get before he started doing them.

Slowly, Alec approached the doors. It stung with magic. Shadowhunters had no natural ability to notice magic, Alec had been taught, but the last year had given him reason to doubt his lessons. Maybe it was living cradled in Magnus’s magic, or maybe Alec was deluding himself, but he swore that he could feel the door’s wards reaching for him. Magnus’s wards did the same thing, but that touch felt like a warm, ring-laden caress against his skin. These wards felt gripping, like they were digging their nails into his bones and pulling him towards the door. Like they wanted to lay their hands over his and curl his fingers around the handle.

“You didn’t want to be set, did you?” Alec murmured, not sure at all who he meant to hear his words. Maybe no one, but a reaction rolled over him anyway. An impression of suffering, of pooling blood on the shining floors, of shaking, exhausted hands sparking with desperate green magic. 

It could be a trick, Alec reminded himself. Magnus liked to ramble his magic theory tangents aloud, and Alec liked to listen to his voice. Sometimes, this habit meant that Alec learned things. Wards were a special fascination of Magnus’s, and so Alec knew just how insidiously cunning a good ward could be. But magic’s tricks—glamours, illusions, tricky, _lying_ wards—always carried a saccharine tang, Alec thought. Alec hadn’t really noticed until Magnus had started dropping his glamoured eyes regularly around him. _Did you change colognes?_ Alec had asked one evening. _No_, Magnus had replied, looking at Alec bemusedly. Alec hadn’t brought it up again, loathe to hurry Magnus along in thinking poorly of him. But then he’d caught the same tinge again when Magnus magic’d on his makeup or snapped his hair to perfection. Those spells were tricks of perception, Alec had realized, so expertly worked that Alec couldn’t see through them. But he could sense a lingering hint, a sweet taste of deception.

But this door… it reeked of bloody, desperate honesty. Someone had suffered while weaving these, like a sword was cutting into their neck as they struggled to pull the magic together. They knew they were dying, but they weren’t fighting for life. Just peace—and revenge.

Any idiot would know that the wards were faulty if attackers could break in, Alec figured, admiration welling as he parsed the warlock’s vision. But if the wards begged to be opened _from the inside_? If they muffled the sound and smell of an invasion? Well. That would be harder to figure out, at least until a stake was sticking out of your back. If pissing off the waitstaff was a bad idea at a restaurant, Alec thought, then torturing your warder was suicide. But Alec supposed cruelty blinded some people. The day he became like that, Alec swore that he would take care of the problem himself.

For now, Alec laid a careful hand against the door. Isabelle would kill him for his recklessness. Touching an active ward was about the dumbest thing a Shadowhunter could do, short of asking a demon out for drinks. But these wards glowed warmly under his hand, lighting up a beautiful Christmas tree green. He sensed the impression of a deep forest, quiet and still, parting way for Alec to walk through. Gently, he dragged his hand down to grasp the handle. Warm sunlight flooded up his wrist, chasing the lingering chill out of his skin. _Please_, a weak wind whispered. Swallowing, Alec firmed his grip. Anticipation whet his senses. The wards danced under his touch. Without thinking, Alec ripped the door open. Sunlight burst over his senses, making Alec smash his eyes together and fall back. _Thank yous _slid softly into his ears.

* * *

“Alec?!” Jace gasped, bungling his powerful forward lunge. His Seraph blade missed Alec’s throat by a mile.

Instinctively, Alec smirked. “No wonder I had to come help. Sloppy work, parabatai,” he snarked. Calm Anger had smothered his emotions enough that he could do things like _banter _again without wanting to rip his skin off. He blinked hard, raising a hand so he could peer at Jace through the brilliant, thankful wards. He tried to push his own gratefulness toward the wards while implying that its gleeful sunshiny glowing was not being so helpful right now.

Almost giddily, the wards pulled back. The golden beams shining from the doorway subsided. Immediately, hands flew to Alec’s shoulders. But it wasn’t Jace’s touch. Alec was nose-to-nose with Catarina instead, who stared at Alec with wild concern.

“What did you do, you dumb boy?” she hissed, sliding a cool hand against Alec’s forehead and then to his pulse point. Her fingers were lit with purple sparks. “How did you get in?” she snapped off, rapid fire. “You didn’t touch the wards, did you? You’re not that stupid, right?”

“Catarina,” Alec tried, but she stormed on.

“These are some of the most aggressive wards I’ve ever seen,” she snarled at him, gesturing to the gory scene behind her. Looking over her shoulder, Alec swallowed. The walls were soaked with blood, and splatter painted all the faces Alec could see. Viscera’s repulsive scent tainted the air. Counting quickly, Alec noted three morbidly absent Shadowhunters.

“Alec!” She barked, dragging Alec’s attention back to her. She shook him hard, sending Alec’s jaw snapping shut. She was pissed, Alec realized, but it was covering worry. For him. Ward breaking, Alec was beginning to glean, was a bit more of a big deal than Magnus’s three am ramblings may have let on. “I know you want Magnus back,” she continued, “we all do, but do you know what a mess he will be if you get yourself killed for him? How many fucking bridges there are in New York—?”

“Catarina!” Alec yelled. She stilled, caught. Self-recrimination filled her eyes and she looked away. The Shadowhunters behind them politely continued to pretend they were deaf.

Feeling somehow worse than he had in the elevator, Alec took a breath. More gently, he explained, “I came up the elevator shaft.”

Over Catarina’s shoulder, where he’d been pushed behind her in her fury, Jace blinked at him. “Alec,” he said, “we’re on the thirty-third floor.” As if Alec were _unaware_.

Catarina’s hands fisted tighter, claw-like, in his tac-jacket. Alec shrugged with her still attached. “I started on the ninth,” he said, “it was fine.” In retrospect, at least.

Jace sucked in a breath, his golden skin undercut by his paling. He rubbed an exhausted hand over his eyes and said, “Izzy is going to chain you to your desk for years, and I will help her. I’m supposed to be the reckless one, Alec. Raziel fucking _wept_.”

“Well, it worked,” Alec retorted, sharp. Hypocrites, his whole damned family. 

“But the wards,” Catarina insisted, voice falling from furious to slightly faint, “how the hell did you break the wards?”

Carefully, Alec gathered up her hands and removed them from his person. He really didn’t like it when people touched him, especially as bloody and ash-soaked as he was from his earlier fighting. A mess like that didn’t belong on Catarina’s hands. “Whoever put them up didn’t want to. I could feel it. So, I just did what they asked and opened the door,” Alec said.

Catarina stared at him in utter bewilderment. “That makes no sense,” she said.

“Okay,” Alec accepted. Alec had larger concerns than magic’s sensibility, which, in his experience, was minimal anyway. So, pushing that problem away for later, he looked over the forces assembled outside the door. Raphael leaned against the railing, watching Alec through narrowed eyes. The seventeen remaining Shadowhunters had dropped back down the staircase, thoughtfully giving Alec and his interpersonal relationships some privacy. But there wasn’t time for that. They had a penthouse to search, people to kill, and Magnus to save—among others, hopefully, Alec reminded himself.

Swallowing, Alec cleared his throat. He signaled to the Shadowhunters and they replied by clomping back up the stairs on Soundless feet, ending in a perfect parade rest. Satisfied, Alec turned to Jace. “You ready?” he asked.

Jace nodded, grim. “Always, parabatai.”

Alec breathed. “Right.” He turned to his forces. “You all know the floor plans. Our primary targets are Etel and Benedek Barany. If they or anyone else tries to kill you, react with lethal force. If anyone surrenders, incapacitate them and move on. Once we’ve secured the floor, medical and support forces will be radio’d.”

“And if we find Mr. Bane, sir?” William Ravenstag asked. He was young, and lethal with Seraph blades—one of Jace’s favourites. He was also one of the Shadowhunter coterie who always chatted with Magnus when he swung by the Institute to make sure that Alec ate something. Coincidently, he’d started wearing eyeliner recently. It made him look uncomfortably younger, Alec thought, but he made himself meet his nervous eyes anyway.

“You’re to radio Ms. Loss and Mr. Santiago immediately,” Alec ordered. He looked carefully at each of their faces, “And if you are ever uncertain, I am always in your ear.”

They knew all of this already, of course. But Shadowhunters liked orders, and hearing orders reaffirmed always settled jittery troops. With every word Alec spoke they stood more firmly, their faces relaxing into calm neutrality. “Am I clear?” Alec asked.

“Yes, sir!” They responded, snapping to attention.

Alec turned and signaled, Jace stepping to his side with natural belonging. “Move out,” Alec ordered, his Seraph blade blooming into a stunning glow.

_Once more unto the breach, _Alec thought, and strode forward. _I’m coming, Magnus. And nothing is going to stop me._

* * *

The penthouse covered the full floor, made of several thousand square feet covered in tiny rooms and winding hallways. It felt claustrophobically Victorian, like a haunted house built from marble and gilt molding. Obviously, the architecture was a purposeful deterrent to forces like Alec’s. They had to break into three teams to cut down on time, working in an expanding fan from the service door. Alec moved to take a group of Shadowhunters south, only to find Catarina glued to his side.

“It doesn’t make sense to have one team without anyone Magnus knows, Catarina,” Alec said, appealing to reason.

Catarina glanced at him dismissively. “I agree. Unfortunately, I can’t trust you not to get yourself killed. Besides, Raphael is with the others.”

Alec sighed, sparing a moment to pity the team landed with Raphael. He spared an additional moment to think that if this was how Izzy and Jace felt all the time, it was no wonder that they rolled their eyes at him so often. “It was just a climb and some wards,” he defended.

“Firstly,” Catarina said, “that is a gross understatement. One slip and you would be gone, and by all rights those wards should have struck you dead for looking at them twice.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Alec insisted. He was keeping up the conversation with a third of his attention, the rest devoted to scanning his surroundings. He was at the point of the diamond, two Shadowhunters flanking behind him, with Catarina directly behind them. Richard Blackburn, late thirties and brutally competent, brought up the rear.

“And I’m here to make sure that nothing else does, either,” Catarina said, resolute. “You’ve got to think, Alec, what would we do without you? What would Magnus—”

“All I think of is Magnus,” Alec said, lethally quiet. “I promise you, he is my every waking thought. But I cannot stop until he is home, Catarina.”

He heard Catarina swallow. “Fine,” she said, “but that’s a dangerous mentality.”

“But it is a Shadowhunter’s,” Blackburn cut in, speaking Alec’s thoughts. Black humour colored his voice.

Alec grimaced. Blackburn’s wife had died last year. Rogue vampires. Amid Valentine’s mess, Intel had missed them. She’d been picked off a regular patrol and drained, but only after the vamps had finished playing with her. Blessedly, Alec had caught wind of it and dragged Blackburn back to the Institute before he could slaughter more than the nest responsible.

“We love once, fiercely. Your friend’s a lucky man,” Blackburn added, tone almost idle. Alec could hear his anger. Blackburn was always angry, now. It was probably why he’d transferred his children’s guardianship to his sister.

“So it would seem,” Catarina murmured in reply, perfectly diplomatic.

Alec bit back a sigh, raising a hand as he came to a stop. “Door,” he announced to the group. Another tastefully non-descript cream door stood out from the wall on their left. In synch, Alec’s unit circled it. On three, Alec kicked it in. It smacked against the wall, and, just like the several before it, revealed no one. Just a cramped little room, the tiled floor slanting down slightly so that blood could flow into the drain in the middle of the floor. A torture room—one among many that they’d found.

“We must be getting closer to where they’re holed up,” Alec said, surveying the room. The blood was still wet on the ground. Someone had been here very recently. He tapped his earpiece. “Underhill,” he said, “we’ve found another one.”

A sigh crackled over the connection. “That brings the count to seventeen. Jace’s team found another two since your last check,” Underhill replied.

“But no sightings?” Alec asked.

“No, sir. I’m sorry,” Underhill said, the last part softly.

“Thank you, Underhill,” Alec returned. He looked over his shoulder. “Blackburn?”

“Sir,” Blackburn acknowledged, straightening.

Alec looked him over, assessing. Running odds. He couldn’t do this any longer. Going room by room, hall by hall. It wasn’t fast enough. These rooms were all empty because the Baranys had pulled back. They knew the Shadowhunters were in the tower, and Alec’s people had made every effort to halt their escape. If they ever had _wanted_ to escape, Alec considered. After all, the Baranys had sent Alec everything but a handwritten invitation. Magnus, tortured on a livestream. Alec would come for him, of course.

Jace had said it at the beginning of this nightmare. Why would they send a video?

“I need you to take the team,” Alec said to Blackburn. “Continue clearing rooms, standard procedure. Underhill,” Alec said, clicking his com again and switching tracks. His brain was moving almost too fast for his body, but runic power and something less tangible than that—perhaps sprawling, blooming wrath, pushing up through his calm like weeds—kept him together.

“Yes, sir?” Underhill answer, his attention immediate.

“Redirect Jace and his team to wherever the biggest living space on this floor is and tell him to stay on perimeter until I give the signal,” Alec ordered. When his orders were confirmed, he signed off.

“Alec,” Catarina interrupted. Alec raised a hand, silencing her.

“You’re coming with me,” Alec said, meeting her eyes, “because I can’t stop you—”

“Damn right,” Catarina snapped.

“But you are going to hang back with Jace. You are not going to move until he does,” Alec said.

Catarina snorted. “I’m coming along to keep you from getting yourself killed, not the other way around.”

“Too bad," Alec said, "I swore to protect you first." He turned on his heel and started walking, moving double the pace he had before. He didn’t have time for this. Magnus didn’t have time for this.

Catarina kept his pace easily. “What’s going through you head, Alec? What’s the plan?”

The blueprints were a perfect map in his mind, so Alec didn’t have to think as he guided them through the labyrinth. Unencumbered by a team or the need to search rooms, he made quick time. When they were a couple halls over from where he wanted to be, Alec paused against the wall and stopped to breathe.

“Alec,” Catarina insisted again. More nervously, this time.

Alec sighed, once and short. He took up his stele again and began lighting runes: Strength, Stamina, Soundness, Accuracy, so many that they blurred into each other. His hand moved instinctively into the next curve or line, his skin aching with the compounded burning.

The smell of his burnt skin lingering faintly in his nose, Alec turned to Catarina. He caught a flash of fear on her face—Alec couldn’t imagine what nightmares of hers burning skin might trigger—but he didn’t let that phase him. “The Baranys want a show,” he said flatly. “They want the Downworld on its knees, and they want the Clave to see them put it there.”

“So they took Magnus,” Catarina said, swallowing, “and they hurt him, and they made you watch.”

Alec nodded. “And tonight’s the finale.”

“Indeed it is, Mr. Lightwood,” Etel Barany said, “and I must say, I am flattered by your eager attendance.” The Mundane gun she had aimed at Alec’s head punctuated her statement.

* * *

The gun was small and silvery. It fit perfectly in Etel’s lithe hands and was cradled there with an easy confidence. Alec had never fired a gun, but he knew immediately that Etel had. Many, many times.

“Etel Barany,” Alec greeted. Calm Anger seared his skin as it struggled to convert his senseless bloodlust into something useful. “Interesting accessory,” he added, nodding to her weapon. “A nine millimetre?”

Etel’s face—a face that belonged on a china doll—lit up in delight. “A Shadowhunter who knows proper weaponry? This is delightful,” she chirped, taking a step closer. Her kitten-heeled boots clicked on the marble, and her mouth pulled into a delicate frown as she said, “That antiquated bow you like so much despaired me, I must confess.”

“I don’t approve of prejudice in any case,” Alec lied. There was a damned good reason that Mundane weaponry was outlawed by the Clave and the Accords both, but Alec doubted that Etel wanted to hear his reasoning. “Now that we’ve found common ground, maybe you could refrain from pointing it at us.”

Etel sighed. “I wish I could, but I’m about to show you something that will make you very angry. And while I’m very fast and my claws are very sharp, I hate to get my clothes all bloody like that.”

“I thought as much,” Alec said, inclining his head. “Is that why I had to bring so many soldiers? You have quite the army.”

“I would hate to be accused of putting on a boring show,” Etel said, smiling. With kindly grace, she extended a hand to Alec. “If you’ll follow me to your seats?”

When Alec hesitated, instinctively disgusted, the gun tilted slightly between he and Catarina. Biting back a snarl, Alec accepted her hand and let it curl around his elbow. She didn’t seem so concerned about blood now, her pastel blouse soaking up the residual muck that coated Alec. “Apologies,” Alec said dryly, gesturing to the staining.

“For you, I’ll make an exception,” she flirted. Rage crawled a little higher up Alec’s spine.

Etel turned to look over her shoulder at Catarina. “Also, as a courtesy,” she said airily, “I'll let you know that I am familiar with you, Ms. Loss.” Her long hair spilled over her back as she turned around. “I promise," she teased, "I’m a faster shot than you are a caster.”

Catarina was uncowed. “As you say,” she dismissed regally. Alec smothered a smile.

Etel’s nose wrinkled. She turned conspiratorially to Alec, murmuring into his ear like they were confidantes. “See, this attitude is why I’ve never much cared for warlocks. So much arrogance. It’s that powerful birthright that does it to them. Makes it hard it to be humble.”

They were strolling leisurely, like lovers walking down the Seine. Etel’s vanilla perfume flooded Alec’s nose. He barely refrained from spitting on her. “But vampires aren’t like that?” he asked instead. He was blatantly stalling, flipping through his plans with a fast mental hand, but Etel didn’t seem to care. Either his ploys amused her, or she thought that she could gain something from him. She was either confident or crazy. Alec could work with both, but he needed to know _which_.

“Vampires suffer humanity for years before we become what we are,” Etel answered, her voice sweetly musing. “And then we suffer exile from good food and human warmth, from the sun and from God’s religion. Heaven, too, I suspect is out of our reach. In all of that, what is there to be arrogant about? ” Etel shook her head. “No, vampires who have all of their faculties are the humblest creatures on Earth.”

Alec pursed his lips. “This tower doesn’t quite suggest that.”

“I know,” Etel said, frowning, “but people need a show.”

“And that’s where you come in?” Alec prodded.

“Someone has to,” Etel rejoined. “The Shadowhunters have put on a rather poor one, wouldn’t you agree?”

“We’ve not succeeded,” Alec agreed. It was both the truth and a placation.

“I knew you were reasonable,” she said, beaming. “I’ve heard you speak, you know. You’re very good at it. That’s why I wanted you here. My brother and I, you understand, we don’t want to fight the Clave. We simply want the Downworld to be a little more solidified.”

“And under your command,” Alec followed.

“If these hands should be chosen to wield it…” Etel began, grinning.

After a beat, Alec finish the maxim, “…Then who am I to refuse the blade? I haven’t heard that since I was a child.”

“Nephilim,” Etel said merrily. “Your people are very good at proverbs. Is it the Angel blood?”

“Mundanes wrote the Bible,” Alec dismissed. If he had a dollar for every religious joke Shadowhunters stared down, his Institute would never face another funding squabble.

“But they were inspired by the Divine, not unlike your Johnathan Shadowhunter,” Etel parried sharply. “You won’t deny that.”

Alec hummed agreeably, using the moment to think. She had a mission, this woman, and delusions of grandeur. The average mercenary could be reasoned with, but not people with a _mission_. Valentine had taught him that. 

Etel leaned into him happily, her crushing grip on his arm relaxing slightly. “Then, like angels, you understand devotion to a cause. Sacrifice. Duty.”

“I do,” Alec allowed, searching her face for her angle and finding frustratingly little.

Etel nodded. “Then, ” she said, “refrain from anger when I say that all you’ll see before you is a sacrifice to a greater good.”

Alec would have replied, but he couldn’t. Exactly as Etel’s voice fell into silence, they rounded the corner. Windows greeted him first, from floor to ceiling. As Alec had earlier thought, they showed off an overwhelmingly beautiful view of central London. From this high, all the lit windows in the buildings surrounding The Helion seemed to sparkle like gems in the darkness. But the view didn’t have Alec’s attention. Nor did the classy furniture, or the expensive art that covered the other wall. The tall man must have been Benedek Barany—he was a lumbering version of his sister—but Alec didn’t care. Alec’s eyes were entirely for the silent man hanging by the wrists from the vertical wrack, his blood dripping down his body to pool on the glittering floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, so technically I didn't lie because Magnus is there for 0.02 seconds at the end. But you're still totally within your rights to come yell at me in the comments. I really meant to have more of him in here, but instead I wrote 5K about Catarina & Alec being Battle Pals ft. All the Other Nephilim, with Raphael as a background dancer. Anyway, I hope you like it--I write to read your comments.


	5. That's a fine looking high horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They say you’re the kind one,” Etel choked through his grip.

The part of Alec that was wholly and entirely the Clave’s had wrested control. He noted this change distantly but without much concern. Magnus’s Alec was screaming, clinging to Magnus’s body and begging Raziel to make Magnus wake up. Useless. Weak. Alec shoved him down and locked him away. Free of panic, he ticked his eyes clinically over the body spread out and bound in front of him. Blunt force trauma had discolored the skin a variety of shades. The most concerning patch was the stomach, swelled and dark with burst blood vessels. The awkwardly dangling left arm suggested that the shoulder was dislocated, if not broken. The hanging position that the wrists were cuffed in had to be excruciating, but the man made no sound. Unconscious, Alec decided, tracking the rise and fall of his brutalized chest. A pang of gratefulness echoed softly through Alec, so powerful that it had escaped the screaming Alec to touch the soldier. Alec felt it like a gentle caress against his soul. He threw it away and focused again on the body. On the wheezing breath that meant broken ribs. The blackened eyes. The bloodied lips. The body that only Alec had been given the privilege of seeing nude this last year, stripped bare like Magnus was someone’s property to be shown off. The prized kill of a spoiled hunter.

“What did you hope to achieve with this?” Alec asked, turning to Etel. His voice was flat and threaded through with the barest hint of curiosity. He couldn’t let on that this conversation was the least of his concerns. That only her ashes interested him.

Etel prattled away with all her earlier enthusiasm. She was the believer. The brother’s eyes were glazed over. He liked the violence and the blood, the luxury and the cruelty. Politics bored him, but the death made up for it.

While Etel talked, Alec ran scenarios in his head. In one he slit her throat with the knife he had strapped to his arm. In another he went for the gun, giving Catarina time to cast something lethal. Both left the brother unaccounted for, an intolerable threat to the body on the rack. Alec stretched his rune-enhanced senses, trying to detect any amassing forces, but vampires were notoriously hard to hear. No heartbeats. No breathing. If they moved carefully enough, they were silent. Invisible. Alec thought that maybe there were other bodies in the area, but were they prisoners or enforcements? Werewolves? Warlocks? Alec was blinded by variables.

“…and so, we will have peace,” Etel said, squeezing Alec’s arm insistently. Her eyes were wide and emphatic, feral with the depth of her fanaticism. Disgusting.

“And this is your peace?” Alec asked, eyes falling again on the body. _Magnus_. The drip, drip, drip of his blood on the tile hit Alec’s ears like thunderclaps.

“It is sacrifice!” Etel snapped, frenetic. “I have seen Hell, Alec Lightwood. Good people ripping themselves to pieces for scraps—”

“And so now others must bear the consequences,” Alec said, performing understanding. He stretched out his other senses, the ones he’d gained at sixteen. He felt his heart beating hard, his pulse thrumming with victory. He was creeping into place, smug with satisfaction, almost hopeful for another fight.

_I can help with that_, Alec thought, and his yell for “Jace!” was what finally silenced Etel’s ardent, bloody philosophy.

Alec was blinded. Parabatai, however, were blessed with four eyes.

Chaos sprung into the room on Jace’s heels. Jace himself moved too fast for it, his runes burning gold through his clothing as he tackled the brother. Etel screamed into Alec’s ear, deafening, but she’d made a crucial mistake in her passion—she’d let go of Alec’s arm. He dropped down and swiped the Seraph blade from the holster on his calf, hamstringing her as he rolled backward. He came up in a low crouch just in time for her to fly at him, gnashing her razor-sharp fangs at his face.

“Traitorous wretch,” Etel shrieked, mad and unironic. Alec’s wrists groaned under her vampiric strength, but Nephilim bones were harder to break than most Downworlders realized. If not, the first time Alec had been thrown into an alley wall would have ended him.

Alec declined to answer her. There was a time for wit and a time for conserving breath. He grunted with effort as he slipped a leg behind Etel’s and pulled them both down, twisting as they fell to straddle her. She writhed viciously, flinging her body around like a snake in eagle talons. Alec’s bones ached with the impact but adrenaline caught him, nestling his wounds in static. He was pinning her with a hand around her corpse-cold throat, his long limbs finally a blessing he could properly appreciate. His other hand scrambled for a stake. None materialized. He’d fought through so many floors before this one—he must have run out. He didn’t dare take his eyes away from her to look somewhere else. He was painfully aware that he had just barely snatched the upper hand. _Fine then_, Alec thought grimly. He fisted tighter his Seraph blade.

Etel stilled and went silent, letting the flood of noisy battle invade their space. Between the screaming and the snarling she must have summoned whatever latent forces Jace hadn’t been able to sniff out; it sounded like the armies of Hell had filled the room. Blood was bitterly fresh in the air, the ashy tang of dusted vampires not far behind it. Alec forced down a cough, wishing he hadn’t taken off his facemask.

“They say you’re the kind one,” Etel choked through his grip, the words hissing out weirdly. Breathing wasn’t an issue for vampires, but formerly human lungs still needed air to help project words. Her eyes watered with blood. “They say you’re the good one,” she tried again. A last-ditch charm offensive.

Alec barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “Your information is outdated,” he said, and ripped his blade through her throat. Her body seized under his thighs, shocked and shuddering. Ice-cold blood seeped out of the wound, soaking Alec’s arms, spilling over his hands and legs. Vampires didn’t spray blood. They had no beating heart to pump it. It just sat there, refusing to coagulate, keeping them plump and non-desiccated and primed to make a horrible scene if you didn’t finish them off in one blow.

Etel’s hands flapped uselessly, trying to save her life from Alec but too weak to do any good. She sputtered, eyes rolling, fangs flashing, until finally Alec had enough breath back to drag his blade through her neck again and sever it from her head entirely. At once, her body went limp. Losing no time, he reared back and slammed his blade into her chest. The Seraph blade tore through her bones like they were paper mâché. He twisted it around, letting the heat from the lit Seraph blade burn out her heart. It took a terrible minute, her brutalized chest heaving under Alec’s restraining forearms, but finally she was dust under his knees. Alec slid back into a crouch, his body thrumming, blade up. It was amazing, to hate something so deeply and then make it disintegrate. The privilege of the Nephilim.

Rolling out of her ashes, Alec got to his feet and surveyed the field. He sighted Catarina and Raphael first, saw that Blackburn and Ravenstag had them covered, and then sought Jace. The bond between them hummed, glutted on righteously spilled blood and a shared intent. Jace grinned and tossed a stake at him, gold glowing hotly in his eyes, following it up with a snarling vampire that he grabbed by the shoulders and swung toward Alec. Alec caught the bloodied stake on reflex, shoving it into the vampire’s chest without thought. It disintegrated and Alec kept moving, the wounds he accrued silenced for the fight by Raziel’s gifts, combatants falling like windup dolls between he and Jace.

“Parabatai,” Jace greeted at they met, the word rolling off his tongue with palpable happiness.

“Parabatai,” Alec rasped in reply, contentment flooding his veins. They drew together back-to-back. Jace’s nearness was an intimate fortification, seeping strength into what felt like Alec’s very soul. A clawed hand struck at Jace, but Alec wasn’t distracted. He brought his blade down and grinned as the arm sprung back, steaming and leaking blood from its new stump. He grabbed the body by the filthy hair and slammed the skull into the pommel of his blade. Stunned, the vampire stumbled back and gave Alec the time to sheath his blade and stake him. Jace’s pride gusted warmly up Alec’s spine.

A hand landed on Alec’s shoulder. Alec spun and struck, fast and lethal—and very nearly murdered Raphael Santiago. “Raziel!” Alec swore, jerking the stake to the left. He missed Raphael’s skin by a hair’s breadth.

“Not quite,” Raphael deadpanned. He was covered in blood and ash, hair in disarray. He looked strange out of a suit, Alec thought distantly. He was tense, too, and his eyes kept flicking distractedly to Alec’s weapons.

Jace snorted, moving to Alec’s shoulder. “You’re lucky you’re not ash. I didn’t think you were stupid enough to sneak up on a Shadowhunter.”

Raphael curled his lip. “And I didn’t think Shadowhunters were stupid enough to confuse allies for enemies. Oh, wait.”

Tuning out the ensuing exchange, Alec looked past Raphael. Ash was thick on the ground but was no longer being kicked up by grappling fighters. A handful of black-clad forms slumped in the muck, still. Others stood silently or bent near wounded comrades. Quiet had settled. The battle was done. “Magnus,” Alec breathed, his entire body listing in direction of that forsaken rack—

“Catarina has him,” Raphael said. He was still watching Alec with his darken eyes, but Alec didn’t care. Alec was too busy being dizzy with relief. Calm Anger flickered on his shoulder, flagging without the battle lust to keep Alec focused. Or maybe those were different sensations taking over his body. Looking at himself, Alec was suddenly certain that he’d lost more blood than was strictly advised.

“Roll your sleeve up,” Jace ordered, manhandling Alec when he didn’t move fast enough. “Stupid idiot,” he grumbled, scrawling a fresh Iratze onto Alec’s forearm. The dark edges that had been growing around Alec’s vision abruptly cleared, the world settling more firmly in his perception. Alec found himself struggling to focus through the much brighter colours now assaulting his senses.

Fingers snapped in front of his eyes and Alec blinked again. “Stop that,” he said, trying to knock Jace’s hand away and missing.

Jace frowned at him. “Are you concussed or just exhausted? I honestly can’t tell.”

Alec ignored him. “Magnus,” he rasped, focusing on Raphael. “He was bad, I thought maybe a punctured lung, but—”

Raphael’s hand fluttered at his side, reaching forward like he wanted to touch Alec but wasn’t sure if he should. He ultimately decided against it, reporting instead, “Catarina has him. They’re in New York now.”

“Okay,” Alec sighed, swaying back on his heels. “He was stable, then,” he said, fighting for logic through his stuttering thoughts and stammering mouth. “He was stable, and he was okay, and he’s going to be fine. We were in time.” Alec felt almost faint. If he weren’t surrounded by the remains of his soldiers and the corpses of those he’d lost, he might have—sat down, ideally. Maybe fallen to his knees. Who could say? As it was, as it ever was, Alec didn’t have that option.

Sucking in a slow breath, Alec nodded to himself. “Why are you still here?” he asked Raphael, narrowing his eyes. His brain had only just caught up with his eyes enough to notice that Raphael’s presence in the penthouse was strange. “You’re supposed to be with Magnus.”

Frowning deeper than usual, Raphael stared at Alec. He crossed his arms. “Catarina thought that it would be better if I stayed here. To keep an eye on you.”

Alec jerked, the words landing like a punch to the gut. _Raziel_. Catarina had implied that he might be forgiven for his transgressions—that Magnus was worth any price. But she must have seen something evil in him to force Raphael to remain behind while Magnus fought for his life. Her confirmation of Alec’s worst fears shook him hard and didn’t let go.

Some of his horror must have shown on his face. Raphael opened his mouth, but with sudden clarity Alec knew that today he wasn’t strong enough to parry Raphael. His runes were flagging, and Alec only had so much stoicism left. So, Alec borrowed a page from his siblings’ book and spoke over him.

“Right,” he said, mercilessly dragging the scraps of his calm to the fore. He shouldn’t be so disturbed, he chastised. The Soul Sword. His deal with Asmodeus. Alec hadn’t been trustworthy in a long time, if he ever had been. His recent workroom exploits had probably just confirmed what everyone around him had only yet seen flashes of. Smothering the tremor in his hand, he hit his com. “Underhill?”

“Yes, sir?” Good, steady Underhill. Alec clung to his voice with both hands.

“Penthouse clear. Baranys neutralized and target recovered. Status?” Alec asked, bracing himself for the reply.

“All floors secured. Two hundred thirty-seven confirmed Clave fatalities, with fatalities projected to reach a maximum of seven percent. All combatants have been neutralized and… hundreds of prisoners recovered, sir. Support troops have been deployed. Permission to send in medical and other aide?”

Alec swallowed that. He had never lost so many soldiers under his command at one time. Seven percent. Exemplary odds for a mission of this size, by Clave standards. Only two hundred and eighty lives lost. Only two hundred and eighty condolence letters to write. Blinking, Alec forced it all back.

“Thank you, Underhill,” he said, miraculously smooth. “Please proceed. And Underhill?”

“Yes, sir?” Underhill replied.

“Excellent work,” Alec said. He signed off before he could hear anything else.

* * *

Time slid foggily through his fingers, after that. His focus became razor sharp in the moment and increasingly blurred the further back he tried to remember. His peripheral vision was filled with flits of gold; Jace, hovering in Alec’s blind spot. He murmured at Alec that he should go home, eat, rest, drink, heal—the list went on. Anyone who demanded more than a few minutes of Alec’s attention was subjected to Jace’s murderous glare. Many people skittered away, their tasks and curiosities not worth withstanding Alec’s vicious guardian.

“Ease up,” Alec muttered when they had a spare minute. He found a water bottle shoved into his hands. Instinctively he popped the cap and downed the contents, finding himself reaching for another bottle when it was done. Jace supplied him, frowning mutinously.

“I’ll _ease up_ when you sit down,” Jace said. “I can feel you, idiot. You’re not okay.”

Alec waved him off, sipping his second water with deliberate slowness. Admittedly, his headache did seem to lessen slightly more with each bottle. Not enough to make the lights stop stabbing his eyes, but enough to make him wonder if he shouldn’t have drunk something without caffeine in it at some point in the last three—four? —days. “Magnus?” Alec asked. _Dehydration_. A joke, Alec thought, the drip, drip, drip of Magnus’s blood loud in his ears again. He crushed the empty bottle and tossed it into a convenient bin, surprised when it caught the edge and fell the wrong way.

Jace’s frown cut deeper. “Stable. Healing. You should go home and see him.”

Alec grimaced. “Is he still unconscious?”

Jace nodded reluctantly. “But that doesn’t mean that you should push yourself to join him there.”

“I’m not,” Alec insisted. At Jace’s doubtful frown, Alec dropped his voice to a whisper. “Jace, I’m really not. But this place is going to be crawling with Clave envoys in an hour. If the scene isn’t being handled perfectly, if our relations with the local Downworlders are not solid, if London raises even the slightest complaint—” Alec didn’t have words to communicate the stakes. Alec had killed two hundred and eighty Shadowhunters to save his Warlock fiancé. If he gave the Clave an inch, they’d take a mile out of the skin of everyone he loved and make Alec watch them bleed to death.

Alec swallowed. He wanted to be with Magnus, but he _needed_ Magnus to be safe. For now, Alec’s distance kept him safer than his nearness ever could.

“They’d take it out on us both, Jace,” Alec muttered, aching with the risk of the gamble he’d had no choice but to take. “The things I’ve done for Magnus. Aldertree disappeared for less, and he did it for the Clave.” Was Magnus any safer in the Institute than with his kidnappers? The thought doused Alec in fresh horror.

Jace grabbed Alec’s arm and held him up just as Alec’s knees revolted under him. “Whoa, brother,” he heard Jace soothe. He felt his skin bruise where Jace clamped his hands on Alec shoulders and heaved him into a chair. Alec was inexpressibly grateful. He could only imagine how his enemies in the Clave would spin it if he was seen passing out among the ashes.

“Alec!” Jace snapped, voice tight with the tension of someone being repeatedly, worryingly ignored. When Alec jerked and looked at him, his nervous scowl relaxed a fraction. “You’re going home,” Jace declared with slow, deliberate words. “I’m calling a Warlock for a portal right now.”

“Jace,” Alec tried again, his voice a painful rasp. Hadn’t he just explained why he couldn’t?

“I know what being the Clave’s prey is like, Alec,” Jace murmured. They were tucked into a convenient alcove, away from any curious soldiers. His hushed voice and haunted eyes reminded Alec of the other worst days of his life, when Jace was hunted and Alec was powerless to help him. Jace’s steady fingers on his cheek drew him out of the headrush, guiding Alec to meet his eyes. “They will not lay another finger on you or Magnus,” Jace intoned carefully, each word its own promise. “I swear on your life, which means more to me than mine.”

Alec clenched his jaw to keep it from trembling. The overwhelming truth of Jace’s words would have been enough to knock him on his ass had he not been sitting already. “I wish that wasn’t the truth,” Alec whispered, pushing through the bond his need to always see Jace safe.

Jace squeezed his shoulder. “Just quit making me worry about you. Go home. Let Izzy check you out. Hold your fiancé’s hand. I’ll keep the Clave off our backs.”

Alec could never resist Jace’s soul-deep certainty; his shoulders sagged without his consent. Jace’s solid heat along his side became all that propped him upright. He needed a new Stamina rune, Alec plotted, but he dare not suggest that to Jace. Perhaps he could abuse Jace’s offer for just a couple of hours. He only needed long enough to wash off the blood and absorb an IV, redraw his runes, and draft his mission report. He could hold Magnus’s hand while he did most of those; press his fingers keenly against Magnus’s pulse and revel in that beautiful rhythm, in his warm skin and the soft whistles Magnus breathed when he slept deeply.

“Are you sure?” Alec asked—a formality. Temptation was heavy on his breath. He ached to guard Magnus’s bedside. He didn’t dream that Catarina or Izzy would leave him vulnerable, but Alec’s fear and love were agreed in his desire to hold the privilege himself.

Against his side, Jace shrugged. “Really, Alec,” he drawled, “I’m the last Herondale. What are they going to do to me, brown-nose a little too aggressively?”

Alec choked on an exhausted laugh, prompting Jace to rub a hand across his shoulders. “Right, and as my first diplomatic mission, I’m getting you a portal out of here,” Jace muttered, raising a hand to his com.

“No need,” a voice cut. Jace and Alec both jerked to their feet, hardwired to respond to authoritative women with a parade rest, only for Jace to relax a fraction.

“Catarina,” he said, blinking. His surprise melted into a grin. “To whom do I owe the pleasure?”

Catarina snorted, tossing back her long black braids. “Never yourself, Shadowhunter,” she dismissed. Jace chuckled delightedly. Alec paused, thoughtful, and then purposefully elected not to think about it.

Turning to Alec, Catarina made a summoning gesture. “Come, Alec. It’s time to go home.” She frowned, her eyes sliding over him with centuries of medical expertise. “If you can even walk, that is,” she said, visibly displeased.

Alec glanced at Jace. “Et tu, parabatai?”

Jace raised his hands in innocence. “Hey, I’m not the rat you’re looking for.”

“No,” Catarina agreed, gesturing to the lurking shadow behind her, “that was his job. Gods, Raphael, I told you to call me when he started to look tired, not when he was borderline comatose.”

“It’s not my fault that his stupid Angel gave him doodles that let him push past reasonable limits,” Raphael bitched. “What sort of divinity makes soldiers designed to work themselves to death?”

“The sort trying to retrofit humanity to survive demons,” Alec mumbled, rubbing his increasingly aching eyes. “It doesn’t matter if we die. We’re like white blood cells. Or something.”

“Nephilim philosophy,” Jace explained to the frowning Downworlders. “Somebody took it as a fun elective.”

“Not everyone could sweettalk themselves into non-existent combat class teaching assistant positions,” Alec jabbed back.

Jace snorted, gamely pulling Alec to his uncooperative feat. Alec smothered a curse. When had he sat down again? “You’re just bitter that archery wasn’t an Academy class,” he said to Alec. Then he turned to Catarina, “Portal him quick while he’s distracting trying to remember his ridiculous dissertation for Advanced Weaponry.”

“Dick,” Alec hissed, “I got a commendation for that, and the Academy started teaching mandatory projectile weaponry supplementals.”

Jace hummed agreeably. “Yes, I don’t know how the Clave didn’t see you becoming such a huge pain in the neck.” Gently, Jace pushed Alec away from his side.

Shamefully, Alec might have toppled over right then if not for Catarina’s bracing grip on his arm. “Raziel,” he muttered, trying to balance on ground that was swaying under his feet.

“Jace,” Catarina snapped, her voice hard with concern, “where is he hurt? I’m not picking up anything that would cause disorientation like this.”

Jace shook his head. “It’s not an injury. The idiot overused his runes and now his body’s cannibalizing itself to power them. He’s going to be on the fritz until he recovers. Probably haven’t been feeling great for at least a of couple days, huh, buddy?”

“Fuck you,” Alec said, focusing on a patch of floor to try and stop the swaying, “you’ve done this, too.”

“When I was fifteen and stupid,” Jace snarked. The sarcasm was covering up real concern, Alec could feel. Rune overuse wasn’t a joke. Raphael was right—runes could and did let Shadowhunters fight past the point of no return. It wasn’t uncommon to find one dead, surrounded by demon corpses, not a single lethal wound on their person.

“What do I do?” Catarina asked, all business. Alec felt her fingers press into his jugular, dutifully recording his thready pulse.

“Tie him down or knock him out,” Jace replied uncharitably. “Preferably in Magnus’s room so you don’t have to worry about him breaking out to find him. Izzy will probably want to read him the riot act, though, so let her do that first. We wouldn’t want Magnus to wake up with a headache.”

“You’re a complete prick,” Alec slurred. “Why’d I agree to be your Parabatai?”

“Because you wouldn’t wish me on anybody else,” Jace winked. He stepped forward and pushed gentle fingers through Alec’s sweaty fringe, then smoothly helped Catarina adjust her hold so that Alec was better supported. “Rest easy for me, brother?” Jace murmured, soft enough that only Catarina could have overheard him.

Rune exhaustion, like any other exhaustion, could disturb the other parabatai. Guiltily, Alec acquiesced. Jace smiled back his easy forgiveness—easy, because he knew that he’d used his leverage well. Then, as Alec grew increasingly lightheaded, it was a mad dash to get him through the portal before he passed out entirely.

Colours spun crazily around him for a moment, forcing Alec to bite hard into his lips to stop the nausea. His boots thumped down suddenly and hard on cold stone, sending pain shooting up his shins. _Home_, Alec thought dizzily.

“I should have never let you out of my sight,” Catarina hissed into his ear, struggling to support Alec’s dead weight. Alec fought to help her, but his body had gone useless. It was too tired to heed his commands.

A cold hand clamped on Alec’s shoulder, thrusting his arm over a solid back. Alec tensed— _vampire?_ _Enemy?_ —but a familiar cologne stopped him from fighting. “We should have known that Magnus would only marry someone as stupid as himself,” Raphael growled.

“He’s not stupid,” Alec mumbled, dragging his eyes open to glare balefully at a form he hoped was Raphael’s. The world was blurring again. “He’s—_magical_.” Mundane or not, in any world, to Alec he always would be; a magician who'd transfigured Alec's grey life into an infinite brilliance by simply existing in it.

Someone—Catarina?—laughed and failed to stifle it. “And if you’re lucky, he’ll maybe wake you up. Hm, Sleeping Beauty?”

Alec frowned. Was Magnus—was he _awake_? He fought a moment, wanting more information, to see for himself—but then his back hit something soft, and hands clamped around his struggling wrists, more clasping his kicking legs, and then something sharp pierced his arm and _cold _flew up his veins.

“Magnus?” Alec slurred, unsure if he’d called out to him yet, unsure if he hadn’t been calling for him the whole time.

“Oh, Alec,” Izzy said. Her hands brushed comfortingly over the cold traveling up his arm. “Sleep now, big brother. He’ll be there in the morning.”

Hope sprung up in Alec, stilling him. Then, without a choice, he fell into darkness with that hope still clasped tight in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes courtesy of pandemic measures cancelling my classes and work for the last few days. I hope that you are all safe and secure where you are and that this chapter helped to ease, for a bit, some of the stress of this situation. Writing it was certainly an escape for me. We have one more chapter left in this story, and it's going to be all the good stuff the "Angst with a Happy Ending" tag promises. Also, I think I'm going to try responding to comments, now that I have so much time. So, if you have questions for me, please feel free to ask! Let's see if I can keep up the habit :) 
> 
> Ps: does Magnus brew Raphael a signature cologne that smells slightly of sandalwood because Raphael learned to associate that scent with safety while Magnus was helping him adjust to being a vampire? You can bet your bottom dollar, he does.


	6. My lover's got humor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alexander,” Magnus said, in his way, exhaling the word like each syllable was a privilege. His arms firmed, chin settling on Alec’s shoulder as he weaved them together as closely as he could manage. He spoke into Alec’s hair when he said, “My love, I would never leave you like that.”

Alec woke in pieces. He gained slowly an awareness that his eyes were closed, and then that he was lying down. Softness and warmth surrounded him. Whatever lay outside of his drowsy perception remained there. Did he want to push past the haze? He didn’t think so. He was so _tired_. But the feeling that he should lingered, encouraged by the barest sense he had that someone was waiting for him. Decided, Alec breathed in and warily tried his senses. He caught a crisp and waxy smell. Not pleasant, exactly, but familiar and soothing. He hummed, confused, and tried to follow it. His face turned into a cloudy surface, hiding him from the light he’d felt pressing against his eyelids. He rested there a moment, struck by how tempting it was to sleep again. He was struggling to give consciousness another shot when gentle fingers eased though his hair.

Alec stilled. He hadn’t registered another person. Who—?

“Easy, my love,” Magnus said, his voice softer than down. And it was his voice, his tone—that lilting lyricism of a place and time that Alec didn’t know. His affection, honey-thick and warmer than sunshine, unwinding every muscle in Alec’s body like so much slack cord.

Terror raked icy claws down his spine. Magnus. There was something about Magnus, something that Alec had to _do_. He didn’t have time to waste lazing around. Why was he even lying down? He grimaced, struggling to make his brain function. He was fighting through wet concrete to grasp at his memories. Then, when he thought he had one, it slipped through his fingers.

“Alexander?” Magnus asked. His tone was more pointed than before, like someone suddenly might hear him. His hand swept attentively over Alec’s forehead. “Are you with me, darling?” His voice wavered, pleading.

Alec’s heart surged. He hated it when Magnus was upset. He answered—or tried to, at least. His throat cracked half-way through, pain silencing him past the first syllable. Pain, in fact, was making itself known across his whole body.

Magnus hushed him gently, the mattress pulling down where his weight joined Alec’s on the bed. His hand found Alec’s back and lay there, becoming a solid weight for Alec to cling to. Magnus gave Alec a moment like that, coddled in sweet, silent darkness. Then, hesitantly, he asked, “Will you open you eyes for me?”

_Will you promise me that you’re not a dream?_ Alec thought. An encouraging kiss landed against his temple, so Alec must have made noises to that effect.

“I am right here, my love,” Magnus said. His touch felt like proof. “Please, come see me?”

_Always_, Alec thought. With tremendous effort, he rolled onto his back. Pain shriek across his whole body, his overused muscles protesting loudly. Flashes of battle raced across his vision, each new pain triggering a sense-memory of striking, pulling, killing, death. Alec hissed, biting back curses through his clenched teeth.

Magnus murmured to him again, his hand still warm and reassuring now that it lay on Alec’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I know,” Magnus said, “I would help, but we’ve both been put in time-out.” His words landed so close to Alec’s skin, but still so gently, that he must have been lying on his side next to Alec.

Alec swallowed, struggling to make his dry mouth cooperate. “What?” He croaked. He blinked his bleary eyes and was assaulted by florescence. Somehow, the light made the waxy fruit smell more pungent. _The medical ward, _Alec realized. AppleTM was the only cleanser Medical had cooked up that covered bleach and rotting ichor’s gross stench. But Alec couldn’t spot the stained-glass Raziel. The window covered the largest wall of the primary ward, its consoling beauty utterly unmistakable_. A private room?_ Alec cringed. Private rooms didn’t have a good reputation. Private rooms existed so that Shadowhunters could die in peace, without their mourners disrupting the living.

A straw wagged in front of his face, interrupting Alec’s thoughts. He didn’t wait to be commanded, leaning forward and drinking in small sips. He slumped back in exhaustion when the cup emptied. If the bed hadn’t been angled up already, Alec wasn’t sure that he’d have been able to manage even that much. His body was sluggish and felt disjointed, something Alec knew he would be panicking about if he could only stir the initiative.

A hand stroked lovingly over Alec’s brow, distracting him, guiding his chin up. Alec went willingly, his eyes focusing on Magnus’s perfect beauty. Having him so close, so _there_, sent his instincts spinning. It hit like adrenaline, his desperation to cling to Magnus until the sun imploded. But, barely able to move, Alec instead just drank him in. The surreal sparkle on his cheekbones and the glitter on his lashes. His grinning, glossy lips and cat-winged eyes. Alec was so devoted to studying Magnus’s details that he almost missed the manic energy that covered him like a shroud.

“Doctor’s orders. No magic for me, no runes for you,” Magnus chirped, smiling. He was continuing an explanation that Alec only half-understood. “This time,” Magnus confessed conspiratorially, “we’ve both scared her enough to be punished.”

“Doctor’s—?” Alec mumbled, so confused, and then—memories. Catarina clad in bloody blue scrubs, dragging Alec upright as he fell out of a portal. Skulking with him through the penthouse. Paling under her glamour as Magnus was tortured for the camera.

The memories struck like fists, hard, a one-two punch sequence that Alec couldn’t get an arm up against. His stomach twisted, protesting, and Alec pitched forward. His gown threatened to strangle him for sitting up, cotton bandages complaining in at least four places as his muscles strained against them. Magnus’s hands fluttered around him like panicked birds, trying to coax him back down, but Alec caught one and refused to let go.

Alec pressed Magnus’s to knuckles to his lips. Eyes closed, Alec reveled in the metallic cool of Magnus’s rings pressed against his skin. In Magnus’s pulse, beating under his fingertips. “You’re alive,” he breathed. “Thank Raziel.” Relief and gratitude filled his veins more than blood.

Magnus’s free hand cradled Alec’s cheek, his thumb stroking over the hinge of Alec’s jaw. His forehead rested against Alec’s, after a hesitant moment, and then his limbs folded around him in the most careful of embraces. When Magnus tucked Alec’s head against his shoulder, Alec inhaled like his last breath was upon him. Sandalwood flooded his senses and he melted against Magnus’s chest. “Thanks be to you, my love,” Magnus murmured into his ear, soft as a kiss.

Alec sobbed, hard and ugly. Tears stung his eyes. He barely dared to fight them back. Something terrorized in him insisted that horror would infect Magnus’s face if he looked up again. Insanely, it begged him to be prepared to find dead eyes staring at him—or dark sockets, stripped of their mark by Alec’s hateful blood. A monstrous end to Alec’s latest living nightmare. “I thought I lost you,” Alec gasped against Magnus’s neck, “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“Alexander,” Magnus said, in his way, exhaling the word like each syllable was a privilege. His arms firmed, chin settling on Alec’s shoulder as he weaved them together as closely as he could manage. He spoke into Alec’s hair when he said, “My love, I would never leave you like that.”

Alec didn’t say anything. With each word and gesture, he felt Magnus’s armour slotting into place. He wore it thick so that he could defend everyone else, locking his hurts behind a wall of hellfire and titanium. Would this nightmare join the pack? Alec glanced at his hands, imagining the blood that had dripped there just a few dozen hours ago. He had probably lost the right to ask. The thought stung, whispering of more losses to come. Alec curled tighter into Magnus, like he could hide against his chest forever. Alec would meet his reckoning, but, selfishly, he didn’t want it to be right now. He was greedily savouring the weight of Magnus’s arms around him, trying to commit the sensation to memory. He wanted to fix Magnus and how it felt to be loved by him there permanently.

As part of that new mission, Alec ran his fingers through Magnus’s dark locks. His hair was only loosely styled, like he hadn’t felt secure enough to leave it aside but also hadn’t cared to do more. Frowning, Alec noted that Magnus was also properly dressed. He hadn’t donned his ostentatious High Warlock persona, but his black jeans were snug and obviously expensive. His shirt was one of Alec’s favourites, the purple colour highlighting Magnus’s coppery skin and the silk hugging his shoulders. It was not the outfit of the freshly tortured.

The last time Alec had seen Magnus in purple, his belly had been plum with internal bleeding. 

“Magnus,” Alec asked, his hand falling back into his lap as his uncertainty grew, “how long have I been sleeping?”

Magnus sighed. He twined their fingers together and lay both their hands down on Alec’s sheets. “Long enough for Catarina to have healed me fully, I assure you. I do give you points for asking so craftily, though.”

Alec smirked. “You know me too well.”

“I beg to differ,” Magnus said, dipping forward to steal a kiss from the corner of Alec’s mouth. When he pulled away, he eyes stayed closed a moment longer. “Two days of watching you sleep was too long,” he nearly whispered.

“Two days?” Alec choked. He took stock of himself, feeling only distantly his wounds. His eyes landed on a line going from his arm to the clear IV bag hanging above him. “Painkillers?” Alec asked, confused and dubious. Alec was mildly surprised that Medical even kept a supply of Mundane drugs.

“Rune exhaustion?” Magnus countered, opening his eyes and raising a brow. “Four days with no sleep or food?”

It _had_ been four days, then. By the end of the battle, Alec hadn’t been certain. And he’d slept for two more? Damn. He needed to contact the Clave. But Magnus was staring at him, concern etched into every line of his beautiful face. Alec’s shoulders, winding tighter with every detail that came back to him, dropped like his strings had been cut. Magnus continued to watch him, waiting.

Right. Communication. They had promised to each other to do more of that, after Alec’s deal with Asmodeus. Sighing, Alec rubbed a hand over his face. “You were taken,” Alec said. “A video was sent to me. And I could tell, Magnus, that whoever had you wasn’t going to let you go. Not unless I took you back.”

“Darling,” Magnus said, brushing careful fingers along Alec’s cheek. Alec leaned his face into Magnus’s touch, his eyelids fluttering. He opened his eyes to Magnus’s gentle smile. “You got me back,” Magnus said, “and I am so, so grateful. But you must know that it would kill me if you were hurt, Alexander. I am old, and I have gotten myself into and out of scrapes you can’t imagine—”

“You wouldn’t have gotten out of this one,” Alec said. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t even want to. He rarely contradicted Magnus; he hated conflict, the temptation for a _fight_. Magnus was the one point of peace in his world and he guarded that peace jealously. But the words slipped out, falling out of his mouth like a blood-slick knife from his hand.

Magnus frowned. “I know they kept me in suppressant cuffs,” he said gently. “And I know I must have looked a mess when you found me, but—”

“—Nothing,” Alec interrupted. “But nothing. Magnus, they—” Alec paused, tried to collect himself and be rational, but all he could hear was the dripping of blood. He looked at Magnus and saw a perfect map of the damage flicker like candlelight over his healed body. “They would have never let you wake up again, do you understand that?” Alec asked.

Magnus was staring at him with his lips slightly parted. Something like horror glimmered in his eyes. “Alec,” he said, but something dark had been unstopped in Alec and he couldn’t halt the flow. 

“You had internal bleeding and flail chest and you were never going to wake up again,” he said. “Because they didn’t want information and they didn’t want revenge and they didn’t want you to _do_ anything, Magnus. They didn’t even dislike you personally. They took you and they broke you down like an animal because they wanted to send a message.” Alec shoved his knuckles against his eyelids. Maybe if he pressed hard enough the pressure would push what he’d seen out of his head. “I was almost too clumsy. She wanted to kill you in front of me.”

Hands wound around Alec’s wrists. “Alexander,” Magnus murmured, and Alec let his hands be coaxed down from his face. “Oh, my darling.” His voice was heavy with love and guilt.

Alec tugged his hands away, crossing his arms over his chest. “No,” he said adamantly. “Magnus, no. This was not your fault.”

“I was snatched off my own streets like a child,” Magnus refuted, jaw clenched. “My carelessness—"

“Did not cause this,” Alec snapped, anger sparking. Not at Magnus. Never at Magnus. But the senseless rage was still there, and it was hard to smother. Pulling himself away, Alec said, “If anything, it was my fault. My Institute that let the Baranys operate in New York.”

“Alec,” Magnus tried again, but Alec shook his head.

“I can’t right now, Magnus, please,” Alec said. “I need to—Raziel, two days. I need to get out of this bed. Or get a pad, at least. Can you call Catarina, please? Is she the one who can let me out of here?” He knew enough about medicine to know that he would need help removing all the wires and tubes plugged into his body.

Magnus stared at him a moment, his mouth opening and closing uselessly. “I think so,” he said after a moment. “She’s certainly been keeping close tabs on you. I admit, the only reason the whole horde of medical staff aren’t surrounding you right now is because I’m selfishly using my magic to silence the monitors.”

Alec deflated. Gently, he took Magnus’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you,” he said, genuinely touched. “You have no idea how much I needed to wake up and see just your face.”

Magnus smiled, the stormy clouds darkening his eyes dispersing. “Only as much as I needed to see you,” he replied, squeezing back.

Alec swallowed, too many emotions pushing against his throat at once. He felt like if he let them through, he’d drown in the deluge like a helpless child. So he grabbed on to the biggest one, the emotion that only Magnus had ever stirred in him. “You know I love you, right?”

Magnus inhaled gustily, like those words had given him the permission to breathe. “Of course, sayang. As I love you.”

They sat there together as Magnus released his magic’s grip on Alec’s various sensors, letting the now shrieking alarms call the cavalry. Alec hated to be fussed over, but even the panicked squeaking of medical-safe shoes on hardwood didn’t dissuade his smile. He felt at peace, for the moment. And if he had learned anything in this last year, it was how to hold on to a peaceful moment for when there were no more to come.

* * *

Escaping Medical turned out to be more of a task than Alec had anticipated. Nephilim medics swarmed him in a larger number than they ever had before, testing his vitals at least twice more than strictly necessary before he was reluctantly deemed fit “pending Dr. Loss’s approval.” This unusual inefficacy was perhaps inspired by the murderous glare Izzy bore while she ordered them about, having wrested Alec’s chart from the lead physician and flatly refused to give it back.

“Izzy,” Alec said, attempting to soothe her, but her furious dark eyes stopped him there. She flipped a page of his chart and continued to read in threatening silence.

“And now you see why I haven’t attempted a jailbreak,” Magnus whispered into his ear, grinning winsomely when Izzy narrowed her eyes in his directed.

She clipped the chart back to Alec’s bed with an angry clatter. “Forgive me for trying to make sure that you stay alive,” she said. Her simpering smile was poisonously sweet.

Alec sighed. “I’m grateful, Izzy, I swear. But I’m fine. I overdid it with the runes, and I’m sorry, but I’m good now.”

Izzy was unfazed. “Cat said she wanted to see you when you woke up. As far as I’m concerned, you can stay right here until then.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “There’s no reason to drag Catarina out of bed.” Izzy had relented enough to tell him that it was just past midnight. A stroke of luck, Alec thought. If he could get a pad—or better yet, into his office—he could report to the Clave by the deadline he’d promise Jia. If the Clave hadn’t already involved itself, Alec didn’t want to give them a reason. If they had, he wanted to give Jia every motivation to summon her dogs back to their kennel.

“Because I’m already here, you mean?” Catarina said, striding into the room. She was wearing clean blue scrubs and looked tired around her eyes. She smirked at him after she finished glancing over his chart. “How are you feeling, Sleeping Beauty?”

“Like I need to get out of bed,” Alec snarked. He scanned the room, looking for—“Where’s Jace?”

“Running the Institute,” Izzy replied. She looked down briefly. “You were right about how much they needed me in Medical and with diplomacy, so he’s handling all the rest of it.”

Alec nodded. The Institute was a demanding creature. “Has the Clave made contact?”

Catarina made a face like he’d said something distasteful. “No politics until I’m sure that you won’t expire. Hold still a second.” Her magic pulsed over his skin in a wave, scoping out his body for any lingering ailments.

Alec suffered her poking obediently. His wounds complained loudly now that he’d had his IV removed, but his head already felt clearer. Nephilim metabolized fast, far faster than Mundanes, so Alec could only imagine what cocktail they’d been pushing into him. “And the verdict is?” Alec prodded eventually. He could feel the clock breathing down his neck. 

Catarina shot him a sour look. “That you nearly put yourself in the ground, but by the grace of your angel I suppose I can let you leave here tonight.”

“If you swear not to use your runes for at least a week,” Izzy jumped in. She smirked at him. “Have fun healing the Mundane way, big brother.”

Alec shrugged. “It’s a price I’m willing to pay. Can I have my pad now?”

Izzy groaned. “You’re impossible, Alec.” She did, however, reluctantly produce a pad from behind her back.

Before he could take it, fingers carded through Alec’s hair. The hand remained there, palm at Alec’s nape. Warmth trickled into the base of his skull, holding his head facing Magnus. Alec nearly hummed. Magnus had moved only far enough away for the medics to reach Alec unimpeded, but Alec had missed his touch all the same. Now, he perched again on the side of Alec’s bed. His eyes were soft and so beautiful that Alec’s heart skipped a beat.

Magnus smiled, slow and sweet. “Will you let me keep you company while you finish up whatever is on that pad?”

“Uh,” Alec said. Thinking was suddenly harder than it had been on the drugs. “It’s not, um. Not exactly going to be quick.”

Magnus’s hand drifted down, trailing heat along his Deflect rune. “Then maybe it could wait for tomorrow?” Magnus asked.

Alec shivered. Blinked. Could it? He felt sick and sore, and Magnus had been gone for so long. And he might be gone again. Catarina had treated him kindly, but maybe just because he was so beat up. Anyway, Raphael and Luke both knew intimately what Alec had done. Had no one told Magnus? Nothing made sense, and Alec was exhausted.

“I need to talk to Jace,” Alec finally said, beating away temptation with a Clave-trained fist. “Alone, please.”

Magnus frowned. “Alexander…”

“Please,” Alec cut in. He felt a headache blooming behind his eyes. “I just—he’s running my Institute. It’s been two days, and this mission was bloody. I had no idea when I let Jace take over that it was going to be for so long.”

Magnus pursed his lips. “I’m sure Jace is completely able to handle it. You, on the other hand, are still bleeding in at least four places.”

Alec glanced down. Magnus wasn’t wrong. His shoulder and forearm ached, pulsing rhythmically with the wounds on his leg and side. He already knew that this week was going to suck, and that every minute he didn’t rest would make it worse. But he couldn’t jeopardize his Institute—or worse. Jilting Jia was just too dangerous.

He leaned close and pressed his lips to Magnus’s forehead, kissing him briefly. As he pulled away, he locked their eyes together. “I can’t go home without knowing that my people are safe,” he said intently. “You understand that.”

Magnus sighed. “I do.” He claimed Alec’s hand, lifting their joined fingers together and kissing his knuckles. “Would you mind if I found somewhere to wait? I must admit, darling, I don’t want to be any further away from you than I have to be.”

“Of course,” Alec said. The thought of forcing Magnus to be alone made Alec physically ill. He looked up from Magnus, noticing for the first time that his sister and Catarina had made themselves scarce.

Alec's lip quirked. “Izzy?” he called.

Sure enough, she popped her head around the door. “Yes, hermano?” It was amazing that she could talk through such a smug grin.

Alec thought about restraining his eyeroll, but Izzy was his baby sister. She deserved it. “Could you bring me some clothes, please? Then take Magnus for coffee in my office. I’m only going to be a couple of hours.”

Izzy put her hands on her hips. “You promise? Catarina said you’re still in the stitch-pulling danger zone.”

Alec raised his eyebrows. “I swear on Raziel.” He put his hand over his heart for good measure.

She snorted. “Fine, but Max will give you the Sad Eyes if you pop even one.”

“Duly noted,” Alec replied. He paused. “How is Max?” Their brother was still training in Mumbai. Alec missed him dearly.

Izzy’s face softened. “I called and let him know that you were okay when I stepped out.” She bit her lip. “We’re all really glad that you woke up when you did, Alec.”

“Me too,” Alec agreed. He gentled his expression to match hers. “Three in, three out, Izzy. Always.”

“Yeah, that’s for damn sure,” Izzy agreed. She gave him a last grin, then swept out the door.

Magnus’s arm curled around Alec’s shoulders as she disappeared, pulling him back against his side. Alec didn’t fight the touch, slumping there gratefully. “I already miss the Iratze rune the most,” Alec confessed. His body felt both too heavy and too delicate to force upright.

Magnus hummed, holding Alec close. “When you’re done giving all your orders, I’ll take you home and take care of you. I can’t use magic, it would stress your system too much like the runes, but I’m sure I can think of other, more _creative_ ways.”

“Only if you let me take care of you, too,” Alec mumbled. Magnus was warm and solid beside him, and Alec was too tired to try and be witty. Magnus always had the best innuendos, anyway. He rubbed his eyes, trying to remove the grit.

Magnus gently drew his hand away from his face. “Just close your eyes a minute, darling. Isabelle will be at least fifteen tracking down clothes for you. You might as well take advantage.”

Alec frowned. He hated to admit it, but he was wearing down. Between the pain increasing as the drugs left his system and the prodding from Medical, even five minutes spent unconscious sounded heavenly. Izzy would wake him when she came in, anyway. Big brotherly instinct meant that her clicking heels could drag him out of the deepest sleep. “And you’ll still be here?” Alec slurred. Half his attention was mesmerized by Magnus’s heartbeat thrumming against his cheek, making talking difficult. Sandalwood flooded his senses, relaxing Alec better than the drugs had.

Magnus’s hand found its way back into his hair, messaging the base of his skull gently. Alec couldn’t bite back his little relieved moan. Magnus chuckled, a sound made warmer by the way Alec heard it through his chest. “As long as you’ll have me, darling.”

_Forever_, _then_, Alec thought. He slipped away into the warm darkness before he could think anymore.

* * *

_Jeans are overrated_, Alec thought as he readjusted the waistband on his most forgiving pair. The band cut right into his wounded side, aggravating the triple lacerations left behind by a vampire’s claws. Unfortunately, sweatpants did not inspire confidence in either his subordinates or the Clave. Thank Raziel that Alec had been called upon to do little but sit still in a comfortable chair. Jace, as it turned out, had firmly taken the reins in Alec’s absence.

“…So, basically,” Jace concluded, reading from his report, “everyone in the Downworld hated the Baranys anyway and the general consensus now is that Alec Lightwood is a badass for taking them down.”

Alec snorted. Granted, Jace’s reports could still use some work. ‘Badass’ wasn’t exactly accepted Clave vernacular. But Raziel be damned if Jace hadn’t stepped up in every other way. His seamless organization of Warlocks and Shadowhunters post-battle had minimized loss of life on an unprecedented scale. The number of dead had actually _gone down_ since Alec’s last update, Shadowhunters tagged as lost causes had been brought back from the brink by Warlock healers. Even the Seelies had sent a few once it became clear that many of the rescued Downworlders were theirs. Werewolf and vampire auxiliaries had ensured that no one attempting to flee the scene had made it outside the perimeter, and it couldn’t be discounted how much easier having Downworlders among the medical teams had made assisting the victims. Jace had executed Alec’s plan perfectly. Alec couldn’t be prouder.

Jace paused in shuffling his papers. He looked up from the pile and gave Alec one of his truly rare smiles. The soft upturning of his closed lips lifted the years and the stress off his face, revealing for a moment the boy who’d looked up at Alec through his lashes and shakily asked him to be _parabatai_. “I did good?” Jace asked, not quite meeting Alec’s eyes.

Alec bumped his shoulder affectionately. “The best. Just like I knew you would.” He opened his end of the bond wide so that Jace could feel his sincerity.

Relief flitted across Jace’s face. “Good.” The sensation of _I didn't want to let you down_ floated into Alec's heart.

Silence settled in the room, a conversation of things unsaid taking place over the bond. The year had been so hard on them. To sit in a silent room with the bond glowing between them felt like the height of peace. That peace broke when Alec shifted, pulling his side. Pain skipped across their connection.

“You should let Magnus take you home,” Jace said, frowning. “I have it covered here.”

Alec sunk deeper into his chair. He wanted to rub out the ache between his eyes, but he didn’t want Jace to worry. Catching Jace’s sudden grimace, Alec guessed that the bond had already ratted him out. “Have you talked to Penhallow?” Alec asked, one eye on the digital clock above the doors. He still had some time.

Jace’s lips pulled deeper. “No,” he admitted. He dragged a frustrated hand through his hair. “Our illustrious Consul won’t talk to anyone but you.”

Alec nodded. “I thought as much.” Jia did love her games. He gave into the pain, messaging the pulsing point between his brows. “I’m sorry I left you with that.” Being snubbed by Alicante during post-op aftermath was never fun.

Jace shook his head. “Not your fault. You want me to set up a call with her tomorrow?”

Alec thought about it. Ten hours in the Loft with Magnus might just be enough to paper over his worst damage. New bandages, another round of painkillers, and solid food would all help. But Alec was learning Jia Penhallow’s language. She wouldn’t see his delay as Alec taking the time he needed to serve the Clave to his best ability. She would feel disrespected. She might think that she’d given Alec too much rope.

Alec loathed the idea of having to earn her grace again. What goodness was left in him might not survive it.

“Set up the call for tonight,” Alec said. Carefully, he climbed to his feet. His whole body groaned but, gratifyingly, he didn’t sway. “I’m going to go find coffee. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be back.”

“Whoa,” Jace said. “That is not what I asked.”

Alec made an acknowledging sound, picking his way slowly over to the door. He felt about a billion years old with how creakily his body moved. “But it is what needs doing. She won’t be satisfied with anything less.”

“It’s two in the morning,” Jace rebutted.

“Which means its ten at night in Alicante. Practically noon, for us.”

Jace stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“She’ll take my call,” Alec assured.

Jace snorted, getting to his feet. “Like that’s what I’m concerned about.”

Alec stopped by the door, one hand on the frame. He narrowed his eyes at Jace. “What does that mean?”

Jace stared Alec down. He blew out an exhausted breath. “It’s been a hard week for you. Everyone knows it, Alec, but I can feel it. Are you sure you want to tangle with the Clave right now?”

Alec bit back a laugh. “It's never been about what I want.”

* * *

“Mr. Lightwood,” Jia, of course, greeted Alec exactly twenty-one minutes later. Her faced peered at him idly from a coms-screen. Cellphones, Jace had related with an irritated twitch, had been ruled inadequate for their meeting.

Alec hadn’t argued. He had just enough energy left to think, and he was stringently conserving it. He stood in front of Jia through sheer willpower, trying to avoid any hint of carelessness. A general conference room wasn’t the most ideal setting for politicking of this level, but Alec would sooner offend Penhallow than evict Magnus from his office. Between Underhill’s personalized security framework and Izzy, it was the safest room in the Institute. If he was going to focus on pacifying the Clave, Magnus _had_ to be safe. 

“Consul,” Alec replied. His hands were locked behind his back, his body holding parade rest instinctively. Once, his mother had made him hold it for twelve hours straight as a punishment. He tried to convince himself that tonight paled in comparison.

“I appreciate your promptness, Mr. Lightwood. You are reporting right on time, despite great personal injury,” Jia said, assessing his body shrewdly. Alec refused to tense under her inspection. He knew that he struck the perfect balance between weakness and strength. Jia could no more call him a liar milking his wounds for more time than she could imply that he was unfit for duty. A curl of satisfaction warmed his gut when she sat back in her broad leather chair, having reached the same conclusion.

“My injuries are healing well,” Alec answered. “The entire New York Institute is thankful for your help in this matter. I wanted to extend my gratitude as soon as I was able.”

Jia inclined her head. “I must admit, you did exceed all of my expectations. The post-ops teams will be cleansing The Helion for at least a month before it can be released back to the Mundanes. And yet, not a single Downworlder complaint has made it to my desk. A mission well executed.” The barest smile clung to Jia’s thin lips.

Alec swallowed back bile. Etel Barany’s blood was still wedged under his fingernails. “Thank you, Consul.”

Jia looked down, likely at a desk full of papers purposely cut off by her camera angle. “I see that the mission was so successful because of intelligence gathered by you, personally?”

Alec did not flinch. “Yes, Consul.”

“I’m pleased to know that the skills you cultivated at the Academy still serve the Clave well,” Jia remarked. “It’s a tough course to achieve top marks in.”

Blankly, Alec responded. “Indeed.”

Jia’s nails tapped once against her oak desk. “You should not be opposed, then, if the Clave needs to call on those skills again.”

Alec would sooner slit both wrists. “Consul—”

“Aldertree has been disposed of,” Jia interrupted, “largely due to your meddling. Filling his place with your admittedly more subtle style would be considerate of you.”

“Victor Aldertree was convicted of leading two different torture rings,” Alec returned, powerful anger charging through his veins. He smothered the wave before it could show on his face. “One of which was only discovered through the dedication of your daughter. I hardly see how his crimes require me to take his place. If the Clave is admitting that such a place exists.”

Jia’s jaw firmed. “Sacrifices must be made to subdue the demonic threat. Alec, you know this.”

“Yes,” Alec said, his hands fisting behind his back. “But the terror and oppression of an entire race is too much, Jia. I thought you knew that.”

“Hypocrite,” Jia snapped. “You were perfectly willing to put your talents to work to save your Warlock.”

“_Talents_,” Alec sneered, “that the Clave forced me to cultivate. Tell me, Jia, is your Clave still coercing thirteen-year-olds into making people scream?” He tilted his head. “Does Aline known what those sacrifices look like?”

She ignored both of his questions. Ice cold, she said, “Take the assignment, Alec, or I release video footage of your interrogations to every Downworld leader I can find. Including your precious Warlock.”

For a moment, Alec had no idea what she was talking about. There were no cameras on the Institute’s blacksite level, a fact that made Alec wonder how she’d known what he’d done at all. Unless—she must have a spy. Yet she didn’t seem to know that Alec had let Luke and Raphael watch. Alec had been keeping their presence during the interrogation quiet. His Shadowhunters were growing used to Downworlders in their Institute, but Nephilim were suspicious creatures. Alec hadn’t wanted to waste time soothing ruffled feathers. Jia’s spy, then, was not particularly good. And Alec had always intended to confess to Magnus. Her footage might result in a trial that Alec probably wouldn’t survive, but Izzy and Jace would be able to step into his place. They had done so wonderfully over the last two days. In the end, the choice Jia gave him was an easy one.

“Do what you will,” Alec said. “I won’t be your pet monster.” 

The silence stretched. Sweat broke out across Alec’s clasped palms. His wounds throbbed incessantly. But he didn’t flinch, and he didn’t drop his eyes. Jia stared back expressionlessly. When Alec finally conceded that he might collapse before the night ended, Jia sighed.

“Has anyone ever informed you that you are an enormous pain in the ass?” Jia asked, her tone nearly idle.

Alec didn’t move a muscle. “Less often than you might imagine.”

Jia snorted. “I’d believe it. Fine. Consider the issue dropped.”

If anything, Alec stilled impossibly further. Mercy wasn’t in the Clave’s nature. Was it in hers? “Thank you, Consul.”

Jia smirked at him. “You shouldn’t be so surprised. A hero of the Dark War, our peacemaker with the Downworld. You’re in a hell of a position, Alec Lightwood. Don’t underestimate it.”

Alec carefully measured his breaths. “I won’t again, Jia.” In the curve of her lips, he could see how she could be Aline’s mother.

Jia hummed. “Good. I look forward to seeing the new world that you’re going to drag us into.” Then, with that comment ringing in Alec’s ear, she disconnected the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's one more chapter after this. Whoops. Hopefully no one minds too much? ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Oops. I fic'ed. But, really, no one can tell me that Alec would be chill with taking Meliorn to the City of Bones and torturing Valentine, and not be chill with cutting up someone who hurt Magnus. So, this fic is me playing with that side of his characterization. Also, canonically, the Clave likes to dabble on the torture-y side of interrogation, so that helped inspire this fic, too. Also, I apologise for all the italicized flashbacks. Alec is introspective, apparently.


End file.
